Skin Privilege

by Karin Slaughter

  A white Cadillac Escalade was parked in the driveway behind Hank's old Mercedes. Lena pulled her Celica close to the curb and turned off the ignition, wondering who was visiting. Hank might be hosting an AA meeting; in which case, she hoped the Escalade's driver was the last to leave instead of the first to show up. Her uncle was just as hooked on self-help bullshit as he had been addicted to speed and alcohol. She had known Hank to drive six hours straight to hear a particular speaker, attend a particular meeting, only to turn around and drive another six hours back so that he could open the bar for the early afternoon drunks.

  She studied the house, thinking that the only thing that had changed about her childhood home was its state of decay. The roof was more bowed, the paint on the clapboard peeling so badly that a thin strip of white flecks made a chalk line around the house. Even the mailbox had seen better days. Someone had obviously taken a bat to the thing, but Hank, being his usual handy self, had duct-taped it back onto the rotting wood post.

  Lena palmed her keys as she got out of the car. Her hamstrings were tight from the long drive, and she bent at the waist to stretch out her legs.

  A gunshot cracked the air, and Lena bolted up, reaching for her gun, realizing that her Glock was in her glove compartment at the same time she processed that the gunshot was just the front door slamming shut.

  The slammer was a stocky, bald man with arms the size of cannons and an attitude she could read from twenty paces. A large sheath containing a hunting knife was on his right hip and a thick metal chain dangled from his belt loop to his wallet in his back left pocket. He trotted down the rickety front stairs, counting a wad of money he held in his meaty hands.

  He looked up, saw Lena, and gave a dismissive snort before climbing into the white Cadillac. The SUV's twenty-two-inch wheels kicked up dust as he backed out of the driveway and swung out into the street beside her Celica. The Escalade was about a yard longer than her car and at least two feet wider. The roof was so high she couldn't see over the top. The side windows were heavily tinted, but the front ones were rolled down, and she could clearly see the driver.

  He'd stopped close enough to crowd her between the two cars, his beady eyes staring a hole into her. Time slowed, and she saw that he was older than she'd thought, that his shaved head was not a fashion statement but a complement to the large red swastika tattooed on his bare upper arm. Coarse black hair grew in a goatee and mustache around his mouth, but she could still see the sneer on his fat, wet lips.

  Lena had been a cop long enough to know a con, and the driver had been a con long enough to know that she was a cop. Neither one of them was about to back down, but he won the standoff by shaking his head, as if to say, 'What a fucking waste.' His wife beater shirt showed rippling muscles as he shifted into gear and peeled off.

  Lena was left standing in his wake. Five, six, seven… she counted the seconds, standing her ground in the middle of the road as she waited for the Cadillac to make the turn, taking her out of sight of the guy's rearview mirrors.

  Once the car was gone, she went around to the passenger's side of the Celica and found the six-inch folding knife she kept under the seat. She slipped this into her back pocket, then got her Glock out of the glove compartment. She checked the safety on the gun and clipped the holster to her belt. Lena did not want to meet the man again, especially unarmed.

  Walking toward the house, she wouldn't let her mind consider the reasons why such a person would be at her uncle's house. You didn't drive a car like that in a town like Reece by working at the tire factory. You sure as shit didn't leave somebody's house flashing a wad of money unless you knew that no one was going to try to take it off you.

  Her hands were shaking as she walked toward the house. The door jamb had splintered from being slammed so hard, or maybe from being kicked open. Pieces of rotting wood and rusting metal jutted into the air near the knob, and Lena used the toe of her shoe to push open the door.

  'Hank?' she called, fighting the urge to draw her weapon. The man in the Escalade was gone, but his presence still lingered. Something bad had happened here. Maybe something bad was still going on.

  Being a cop had given Lena a healthy respect for her instinct. You learned to listen to your gut when you were a rookie. It wasn't something that could be taught at the academy. Either you paid attention to the hairs sticking up on the back of your neck or you got shot in the chest on your first call by some whacked-out drug addict who thought the aliens were trying to get him.

  Lena pulled the Glock, pointed it at the floor. 'Hank?'

  No answer.

  She stepped carefully through the house, unable to tell if the place had been tossed or if Hank just hadn't bothered to straighten up in a while. There was an unpleasant odor in the air, something chemical, like burned plastic, mixed with the usual reek of cigarettes from Hank's chain-smoking and chicken grease from the takeout he got every night. Newspapers were scattered on the living room couch. Lena leaned down, checked the dates. Most were over a month old.

  Cautiously, she walked down the hallway, weapon still drawn. Lena and Sibyl's bedroom door stood open, the beds neatly made. Hank's room was another matter. The sheets were bunched up at the bottom like someone had suffered a fever dream and an unpleasant brown stain radiated from the center of the bare mattress. The bathroom was filthy. Mold blackened the grout, pieces of wet plaster hung from the ceiling.

  She stood outside the closed kitchen door, Glock at the ready. 'Hank?'

  No answer.

  The hinges creaked as she pushed open the swinging door.

  Hank was slumped in a chair at the kitchen table. AA pamphlets were stacked hundreds deep in front of him, right beside a closed metal lockbox that Lena instantly recognized from her childhood.

  His kit.

  Junkies loved their routines almost as much as they loved their drugs. A certain type of needle, a particular vein… they had a habit for their habits, an M.O. they followed that was almost as hard to break as the addiction. Thump the bag, tap out the powder, flick the lighter, lick your lips, wait for the powder to turn to liquid, the liquid to boil. And then came the needle. Sometimes thinking about the rush was enough to get them halfway there.

  Hank's drug kit was a metal lockbox, dark blue with chipped paint that showed the gray primer underneath. He kept the key in his sock drawer, something even a seven-year-old girl could figure out. Though the box was shut now, Lena could see the contents as clearly as if the lid was open: hypodermics, tin foil, torch lighter, filters broken off from cigarettes. She knew the spoon he used to heat the powder as well as she knew the back of her hand. Tarnished silver, the ornate handle bent into a loop that you could wrap around your index finger. Hank had caught her with it once and spanked the skin off her ass. Whether this was because Lena was messing with his stuff or because he wanted her to stay clean, she still did not know.

  She was leaning against the kitchen counter, gun still in her hand, when Hank finally stirred. Milky eyes looked up at her, but she could tell he couldn't focus, couldn't see, didn't care. Drool slid out of his open mouth. He hadn't put in his teeth, hadn't bathed or combed his hair in what looked like weeks. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and she saw the tiny scars that needles had left so many years ago mingling with new punctures – ulcerous, gaping holes – where the drain cleaner or talcum powder or whatever the hell had been used to cut the shit he was putting into his veins had set up an infection.

  The gun raised up into the air. She felt outside herself, as if the weapon was not connected to her hand, as if it wasn't her finger on the trigger, and her own voice saying, 'Who the fuck was that man?'

  Hank's mouth opened, and she saw the dark red gums where his teeth had been, teeth that had rotted in his mouth because the drugs had eaten him from the inside out.

  'Tell me!' she demanded, shoving the Glock in his face.

  His tongue lolled outside his mouth as he struggled to speak. She had to use both hands to keep the gun steady, keep it from
going off in her hands. Minutes passed, maybe hours. Lena didn't know; she was incapable of keeping time, figuring out if she was in the present or somehow trapped in the past, back thirty years ago when she was just a scared kid wondering why her uncle's grin was so wide when blood was streaming from his nose, his ears. She felt her skin prickling from the heat inside the house. The odor coming off Hank was unbearable. She remembered that smell from her childhood, knew he wouldn't take care of himself, didn't want to bathe because the layer of grime on his skin clogged his pores and helped hold in the drug longer.

  Lena forced her hands to put the gun down on the counter, keeping her back to him as she tried to stop the memories that came flooding back: Hank passed out in the yard, children's services coming to the front door to take them away. Sibyl crying, Lena screaming. Even now, hot tears slid down her cheeks, and she was suddenly that little girl again, that helpless, powerless little girl whose only hope in life was a useless fucking junkie.

  She swung around, slapping him so hard that he fell into a heap on the floor.

  'Get up!' she shouted, kicking him. 'Get the fuck up!'

  He groaned, curling into a ball, and she was reminded that even in a weakened state, the body did what it could to protect itself. She wanted to pummel him with her fists. She wanted to beat his face until no one would recognize him. How many nights had she lain awake, crying her eyes out as she waited for him to finally come home? How many mornings had she found him facedown in his own vomit? How many strangers had stayed the night – nasty, vile men with their leering smiles and fat, prodding fingers – while Hank remained oblivious to anything but chasing his high?

  'Was that your dealer?' Lena demanded, feeling a wave of nausea building in her stomach. 'Was that your connection?'

  He whispered something, blood spraying in a fine mist on the filthy linoleum.

  'Who?' she screamed, leaning over his curled body, wanting to hear his words, to get the dealer's name. She would track him down, take him into the woods, and put a bullet in his skull. 'Who was that man?'

  'He was…' Hank wheezed.

  'Give me his name,' Lena ordered, kneeling beside him, her fists clenched so tight that her fingernails were cutting into her palms. 'Tell me who he is, you stupid fucker.'

  His head turned up, and she saw him struggling to focus. When his eyelids began to flutter closed, she grabbed his greasy yellow hair in her fist, yanked his head up so he had no choice but to look at her.

  'Who is he?' she repeated.

  'The man…'

  'Who?' Lena said. 'Who is he?'

  'He's the one,' Hank mumbled, his eyes closing as if the effort of keeping them open was just too much. Still, he finished, 'He killed your mother.'

  MONDAY EVENING

  THREE

  From the moment James Oglethorpe first set foot in Georgia, men had been trying to chop up the state into their own perfect little pieces. The first attempt came in 1741, when the Trustees decided to split the land into two colonies: Savannah and Frederica. When Georgia became a royal colony and adopted the Church of England as their official religion, the territory was sectioned into eight parishes. After the Revolutionary War, Creek and Cherokee land in the south was taken for white expansion, then later more Cherokee land was claimed in the north.

  By the mid-1800s, no Indian territory remained, so the good ol' boys decided to start subdividing existing counties. Once 1877 rolled around, there were 137 counties in Georgia – so many little pockets of political power that the state constitution was amended to stop the overdevelopment, then amended again in 1945 to close loopholes that had allowed the creation of 16 counties in between. The final number allowed was 159, each with its own representative in the state assembly, its own county seat, its own tax base, schools, judges, political systems, and its own locally elected sheriff.

  Jeffrey did not know much about Elawah County, other than that its founders had obviously borrowed the name from the Indians they had kicked out for the land. Night had come by the time he and Sara reached the town limits, and from what they could see, the place was not much to write home about. Lena was hardly the type to sit down and chat about her childhood, and Jeffrey understood why as he drove through Reece, Elawah's county seat. Even the dark of night could not obscure the town's depressing bleakness.

  Jeffrey had studied American history at Auburn University, but you wouldn't find it written in any textbook that there were some places in the south that still had not recovered from Reconstruction. Running water, indoor plumbing, basic necessities that other Americans took for granted, were considered luxuries to people living on the wrong side of Reece's tracks. Jeffrey's hometown of Sylacauga, Alabama, had been poor, but not this kind of poor. Reece was the sort of festering wound that was only exposed when some kind of natural disaster yanked off the scab.

  'Up here on the left,' Sara said, reading the directions Jeffrey had gotten from the sheriff.

  Jeffrey took the turn, glancing at Sara as a streetlight illuminated the car's interior. She had changed into jeans and a sweater, but her face was still drawn. He wasn't sure if this was because of the malpractice deposition or because of the situation with Lena. He had been surprised when Sara had volunteered to come. She was certainly no fan of Lena 's. While the two women had managed to keep their exchanges civil over the years, some of the worst arguments Jeffrey and Sara had had in recent memory were over the young detective – Lena's stubbornness, her quick temper, what Sara saw as the other woman's casual disregard for her own safety and Jeffrey saw as the makings of a damn good cop.

  Part of Sara's bad opinion was Jeffrey's fault. At home, he only talked about Lena in the context of her screwups. He'd never had a conversation with Sara about the things Lena did well: the way she could work an interrogation or the fact that sometimes she actually learned from her mistakes. Having made colossal mistakes of his own early on in the job, Jeffrey was more forgiving. Truthfully, Lena reminded him a lot of himself when he was her age. Maybe Sara felt the same way; she wasn't exactly a big fan of the Jeffrey Tolliver she'd known ten years ago.

  If Jeffrey had to guess, he'd say that Sara's offer to tag along came because she hadn't wanted to be by herself. Or maybe she'd just wanted to get the hell out of town. Jeffrey wasn't too pleased with how the citizens of Grant County were treating his wife right now, either. For the last two months, he'd been keeping a running list in his head of people who would never have a speeding ticket fixed for them again.

  'Up here,' she said, pointing to a side street that looked like a dead end.

  'You sure?'

  Sara scanned the directions again. 'It says take a right at the barbecue joint.'

  He slowed the car as he blindly reached overhead, looking for a way to turn on the interior lights.

  'Here,' she said, pressing a button near the rearview mirror. Sara's BMW was like butter on the road, but all the bells and whistles made Jeffrey's head hurt.

  He took the directions from her, holding them up to the light.

  She said, 'It's not like I can't read your handwriting. You have the penmanship of a first grade teacher.'

  He pointed to the satellite navigation screen on the dash, which had read, 'No data available for this position' for the last half hour. 'How much extra did you pay for this thing?'

  'What does that have to do with your handwriting?'

  He didn't answer as he looked at his notes. He'd clearly written 'right at barbecue joint.'

  Jeffrey handed the sheet of paper back to Sara and took the right. He drove slowly, the car's tires dipping into one pothole after another. He was about to turn around when Sara spotted a familiar blue road sign with an H on it. Farther up ahead, they could see the bright lights of a parking lot, and beyond this, what could only be the hospital.

  ' Fifth Avenue,' Sara read off the street sign. She didn't say anything more as he pulled into the parking lot.

  The Elawah County Medical Center was across from a Dunkin' Donuts and a Kentucky
Fried Chicken, both closed this time of night. The hospital building was an architect's nightmare. Part poured concrete, part cinder block, and yet another part brick, the two-story structure looked like a mangy dog that had been kicked to the curb. The few vehicles scattered around the parking lot were mostly trucks, mud caked around their wheel wells from a recent rain. NASCAR stickers and Jesus fish dotted the chrome bumpers. They had driven almost three hours straight to get here, but there was no mistaking they were still in a small Southern town.

  Jeffrey took an empty space right by the emergency room entrance. He didn't get out of the car, didn't turn off the ignition. He just sat there, thinking about what little information he'd been given. Lena had been involved in an explosion. She was being treated at the hospital. She had been arrested.

  What has she done now?

  Those were Sara's words – Sara, who couldn't understand why Jeffrey had stood by Lena all these years, who didn't know what it was like to grow up with no one rooting for you, no one thinking you'd end up doing anything but making your parents' own stupid mistakes. If that were the case, Jeffrey would die a worthless drunk like his old man and Lena would – he didn't know what would happen to Lena. Her only saving grace was that she had rejected Hank Norton as a role model. As for the rest of the people in Lena 's life, Jeffrey had only met one of them, an ex-boyfriend, ex-felon, ex-neo-Nazi whose sorry ass Jeffrey had happily hauled back to prison.

  'Hey,' Sara said, softly. 'You okay?'

  'Yeah.' He turned to her. 'Listen, I know how you feel about Lena, but-'

  'Keep it to myself?' she interrupted. He studied her face, trying to figure out if she was annoyed or angered by the request. Neither emotion seemed to register, and she actually managed a smile. 'Let's just get this over with and go home.'

  'Good plan.' He turned off the ignition and got out of the car. The smell of cigarette smoke wafted through the air, and Jeffrey could see a couple of paramedics leaning against an ambulance, shooting the shit as they waited for their next call. One of them tossed Jeffrey a wave and he nodded back as he walked around to open Sara's door.