Skin Privilege

by Karin Slaughter

  The sedan shook when he slammed the door.

  Deep scratches cut across his face as if he'd gotten into a fight with a tiger and lost. He stared at Jeffrey, challenging, 'What the fuck you lookin' at?'

  Jeffrey pushed back his jacket, put his hand on his hip. His gun was tucked under the front seat of Sara's car, but the con didn't know that. 'Don't make this a problem.'

  'Fuck you with your fucking problem,' the man barked, heading toward the ER.

  Through the glass doors, Jeffrey saw Jake Valentine leaning over the desk, talking to the receptionist. They both looked up when the man entered the waiting room. Valentine glanced at Jeffrey, but the sheriff was too far away to read his expression. He said something to the thug, holding out his hand, palm down, as if to calm him. Words were exchanged, then the man turned around and stalked back out. As he passed Jeffrey, he muttered, 'Cocksucker,' but Jeffrey wasn't sure who was being insulted.

  Valentine came out of the hospital as the white car backed up, jumped the curb, and sped off.

  Jeffrey glanced into the car, checking on Sara. He asked Valentine, 'Friend of yours?'

  'Local drug dealer who wanted to see one of his boys,' Valentine explained. I told him to come back during visiting hours.'

  Jeffrey gave him a close look, wondering if the man was lying. The exchange had looked a bit more heated than a denied visiting request, but then again the knife-carrying thug didn't strike Jeffrey as someone who liked to be told no.

  'Here,' Jeffrey said, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out a couple of business cards. He wrote something on the back of the top card, then

  thumbed to the next one to give to the sheriff. 'My cell number is on the bottom. Call me if you find my detective.'

  Valentine gave the card a wary glance before taking it.

  Jeffrey pocketed the rest of the cards. He got into the BMW and pulled out of the parking lot. Neither he nor Sara had much to say as he followed the route they had taken into town. Valentine was wrong about the twenty-minute lead. Jeffrey figured Lena had fifteen, tops. He asked the questions that the sheriff was probably asking himself right now: Where would Lena go? Who could she turn to?

  Him. Lena had always come to Jeffrey when she had a problem, whether she needed something as small as a ride into work or as big as taking care of her asshole white supremacist boyfriend. This time was different, though. This time she had gone too far. Valentine was right about one thing: on purpose or not, Sara had aided Lena 's escape. Lena was a cop; she knew the law better than most lawyers. She'd known exactly what she was dropping Sara into and she hadn't cared.

  In the quiet of the car, Sara asked, 'What now?'

  'We go back home.' He could feel her looking at him, trying to figure out if he was serious. 'I mean it, Sara. This is it.'

  'You're just going to leave Lena down here to rot?'

  'After what she said to you? What she did to you?' He shook his head, his mind made up. 'It's over. I don't care what happens to her.'

  'Did you see her reaction when we walked into that room?'

  'I heard what she said.' He felt his anger spark back up at the memory. 'There's no choice here, Sara. She used you. I'm not going to help her.'

  'I've never seen her so afraid. She's usually completely in control of herself.'

  He snorted at the idea. 'Maybe with you.'

  'You're right. She never shows me her weak side. It's always this act, this posturing about how tough and invincible she is.' Sara insisted, 'That wasn't an act back there, Jeffrey. Maybe later, but when she saw us in her room, she was absolutely terrified.'

  'Then why not talk to me? Or at least to you? She had you alone. She knew you weren't going to run off and tell the sheriff anything. Why didn't she confide in you?'

  'Because she's scared.'

  'Then she should've just shut up and left you out of it.'

  Sara spoke carefully. I appreciate that you're taking up for me, but just think about it for a minute: Lena knew that if she hurt me, you would do exactly what you're doing right now. She didn't want me to leave town, Jeffrey. She wanted you to.'

  Jeffrey gripped the steering wheel, not wanting to admit that Sara could be right. 'Since when did you start taking up for Lena Adams?'

  'Since…' Sara's voice trailed off. 'Since I saw her scared enough to risk everything in order to get you away from this town.'

  He saw the scene again, the way Lena had reacted. Sara was right: Lena wasn't faking her fear. She hadn't looked Jeffrey in the eye because she knew that he was probably the only person in the world who knew when she was lying.

  Sara said, 'I've seen her in a lot of bad situations, but I've never seen her terrified like that.'

  Jeffrey let her words hang between them as over and over, he replayed Lena 's response in his mind, trying to figure out what it had to do with the dead body in the torched Cadillac.

  Sara told him, 'She said that I should be afraid.'

  'Did she say why?'

  'She went into this pity thing about how everything she touches turns to crap. I thought she was feeling sorry for herself, but now I think she realized what she was doing wasn't working, so she decided to try something else.' Sara shook her head. 'She's terrified, Jeffrey – so terrified that she's willing to cut you out of her life if she has to. You're the only constant she's ever had. What's so horrible that she's willing to lose you?'

  'Did you ever think maybe she's right?' he responded, not wanting to answer her question. 'Maybe it's a good idea that I don't get involved.'

  She gave something like a laugh. 'You're not going to leave this alone.'

  'You sound pretty sure about that.'

  'Seven-eight-zero, A-B-N.' She paused, as if she expected an answer. 'Isn't that what you wrote on the back of the card – the license plate number from the white car?'

  Jeffrey took out the card, checked the number on the back. 780 ABN. As usual, Sara had perfect recall. He glanced at his wife. She was staring out the window, keeping her thoughts to herself. He knew that she was no longer regretting the fact that she'd come to the hospital with him. She was regretting that he was there, that Lena had yet again managed to pull Jeffrey into something dangerous.

  Sara was a cop's wife, and she had absorbed a cop's mistrust of coincidence. The thug in the white sedan had shown up less than thirty minutes after Lena 's escape. Even from where she sat in the BMW, the tattoo on the man's arm must have stood out to Sara like a neon sign.

  It's hard not to notice a blood-red, four-inch swastika.

  TUESDAY MORNING

  FOUR

  Sara paced around the motel room with the phone tucked up against her ear, the cord limiting her movement like a leash on a dog. Both Sara and Jeffrey had been relieved when they had seen the 'vacancy' sign outside the Home Sweet Home Motel as they drove out of Reece last night, but Sara had regretted their decision to stay the moment Jeffrey had opened the door. The place was almost from a parallel universe, the kind of dump that Sara thought only existed in B movies and Raymond Chandler novels. Just thinking about the dank shag carpet in the bathroom was enough to bring a shudder of revulsion. Making matters worse, neither Jeffrey's nor Sara's cell phone could get a signal in the motel. Sara had used all the alcohol swabs she could find in the first-aid kit from her car before she could even think about using the phone.

  'What did you say?' her mother asked. She was somewhere in Kansas. Her parents were only two weeks into their road trip and already Sara could tell that Cathy was desperate to return home.

  'I said that Daddy's not that bad,' Sara answered, thinking it was a rare day indeed that she felt compelled to defend her father. Cathy and Eddie Linton had been married for over forty years, yet Sara had guessed from the beginning that their dream vacation together was a big mistake. The fact was, her parents did not spend much time in each other's company, let alone stuck in a confined space. Her father was always at work or fooling around in the garage, while her mother usually had some meeting t
o attend, a rally to organize, or a church group that took her away from home for hours on end. Their independence was the secret to their happy marriage. The thought of them both trapped in the thirty-seven-foot Winnebago they had purchased for their two-month-long trek across America was enough to give Sara a headache.

  I just never realized how irritating he can be,' her mother insisted. She was obviously in the kitchen of the RV; Sara could hear cabinets opening and closing. 'How hard is it to hook up to a waste trap? The man is a plumber, for the love of God.' She gave a heavy sigh. 'Two hours, Sara. It took him two whole hours.'

  Sara held her tongue, though her mother had a point. On the other hand, her father was probably dragging out the chore in order to prolong his life.

  'Are you listening to a word I'm saying?'

  'Yes, Mama,' Sara lied. She was wearing thick socks, but she used her big toe to prod a green MStM that seemed to be stuck in the carpet by the window. 'Two hours.'

  Her mother was silent for a moment, then said, 'Tell me what happened.'

  Sara gave up on the M amp;cM when her sock kept getting stuck to the candy. She resumed pacing. I told you what happened. I let her escape. I might as well have opened the door for her and driven her to the airport.'

  'Not that,' Cathy insisted. 'You know what I'm talking about.'

  It was Sara's turn to sigh. She was almost glad she'd made a fool of herself last night at ^he hospital because Lena 's rapid departure had given Sara a new thing to toss and turn over when she was supposed to be sleeping. Now, her mother's question brought the malpractice suit firmly back into her consciousness.

  Sara told her, 'I would say their strategy is to claim that because I was attacked ten years ago, I was too distracted to tell the Powells that Jimmy had leukemia, and that he died because I waited an extra day.'

  'That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.'

  'Their lawyer can be pretty persuasive.' Sara thought about the lawyer, her Tourette's-like crocodile smile. 'She even had me convinced.'

  Another cabinet was opened and closed. 'I can't believe that another woman would do this to you,' Cathy said. 'It's disgusting. This is why women will never get ahead: other women are constantly cutting them off at the knees.'

  Sara held her tongue, not in the mood for one of her mother's feminist lectures.

  Cathy offered, I can come home if you need me.'

  Sara nearly dropped the phone. 'No. I'm fine, really. Don't ruin your vacation because of-'

  'Shit,' her mother hissed; it was rare that an expletive crossed her lips. I have to go. Your father just set himself on fire.'

  'Mama?' Sara pressed the phone to her ear, but her mother had already hung up.

  Sara held the phone in her hand, wondering if she should call back, deciding that if something had been really wrong, her mother would have sounded less annoyed. Finally, she returned the phone to the cradle and went over to the large plate glass window looking out into the motel parking lot. Sara had kept the drapes closed most of the morning, thinking sitting alone in the dark room was less bleak than staring out into the empty lot… Now, she opened the polyester drapes a few inches, letting in a thin ray of light.

  The table and set of white plastic lawn chairs by the window seemed perfect companions to the dismal view. Sara adjusted the threadbare towel she'd draped over one of the chairs and sat down. Exhaustion overwhelmed her, but the thought of getting back into bed, sliding between the rough, yellowing sheets, was too much to bear.

  She had walked across the street earlier in the morning to buy coffee and ended up purchasing some Comet with bleach additive and a sponge that smelled like it had already been used. Her thought had been to tidy the room, or at least make the bathroom less disgusting, but every time she thought about taking the supplies in hand and actually using them, Sara found that she didn't have the energy. What's more, if she was going to clean anything, it should be her own home.

  She tried to list the chores she could be doing back in Grant County right now: folding the laundry piled on the bed in the spare room, fixing the leak in the bathroom sink, taking the dogs for a walk around the lake. Of course, the reality was that Sara had done none of these tasks in the weeks since she'd closed the clinic. For the most part, she'd sat around the house brooding about the lawsuit. When her sister called from Atlanta, Sara had talked about the lawsuit. When Jeffrey got home from work, she had talked about the lawsuit.

  She had become so obsessed with discussing the suit that finally, her mother had snapped, 'For the love of God, Sara, do something. Even patients in mental homes have to weave baskets.'

  Unfortunately, getting out of the house only exacerbated the problem. Whether Sara was at the grocery store or picking up Jeffrey's suits from the cleaners or even raking leaves in the front yard, she had felt people's eyes on her. Not just that, but she'd felt their disapproval. The few times she'd talked to anyone, the conversations had been brief if not downright cold. Sara hadn't told anyone about these exchanges – not Jeffrey, not her family – but she had found herself sinking deeper and deeper into depression with each encounter.

  And now, courtesy of Lena Adams, Sara had one more failure to add to her list. How could she have been so easily tricked? How could she have been so utterly idiotic? All night, Sara had tried to parse each moment of her time with Lena, picking apart the seconds, trying to see how she could have acted differently, how she could have changed the outcome. Nothing came to mind except her own glaring stupidity.

  Lena had been up on her knees in bed, the restraints keeping her from moving any farther away. As soon as Jeffrey and the sheriff left, she relaxed, her arms going limp.

  Sara had studied her, noticed the way the other woman's chest shook with every exhale of breath. 'What's going on, Lena? Why are you so afraid?'

  'You have to get out of here. Both of you.' Her voice was quiet, ominous. When she looked up, her eyes seemed to glow with terror. 'You have to get Jeffrey out of here.'

  Sara felt her heart stop. 'Why? Is he in danger?'

  Lena did not answer. Instead, she looked down at her hands, the tangled sheets. 'Everyone, everything I touch – it all turns to shit. You have to get away from me.'

  'Do you really think we're going to abandon you?' Sara had said 'we,' but they both knew that she meant Jeffrey. 'Someone died in that car, Lena. Tell me what happened to you.'

  She shook her head, resigned.

  ' Lena, talk to me.'

  Again, no answer came. That must have been when Lena had decided her course of action, that if she could not control Sara, she could at least use her.

  'I'm so dirty,' she'd said, her tone of voice indicating the filth was more than skin-deep. I feel so dirty.' She'd looked up at Sara. Tears wet her eyes, and though her voice was more restrained, her hands still shook in her lap. I need to wash off. I have to wash off.'

  Sara hadn't even thought about it. She'd walked over to the side of the bed and unstrapped the Velcro restraints. 'You're going to be okay,' she'd promised. 'You need to trust me, or I can get Jeffrey-'

  'No,' Lena begged. 'Just… I just need to wash off. Let me…' Her lips trembled. All the fight seemed to be drained out of her. She slid to the edge of the bed, tried to stand on shaky legs. Sara put her arm around the other woman's waist, helped her gain her footing.

  Lena had really acted the part, Sara thought. A decided frailty had marked her every move. Nothing about her actions suggested she was capable of climbing on a toilet and pulling herself up into a drop ceiling, let alone eluding a manhunt.

  Sara had been completely fooled, walking alongside Lena across the room, keeping her arm out a few inches from the other woman's back in case her support was needed. It was an automatic gesture, the sort of thing you learned your first week as a resident. Sara had escorted her all the way to the bathroom, shuffling her feet to match Lena 's slow gait.

  What Sara had been thinking as they walked was that Lena was not a whiner. She was the type of person wh
o would rather bleed to death than admit she had been cut. Sara found herself wondering if maybe the doctors had misdiagnosed Lena, that she should look at the chest X-rays, find a stethoscope, review the drugs that had been administered, run some fluids, do some blood work. Was there brain damage, some kind of shock from the explosion? Had Lena fallen? Hit her head? Had she lost consciousness? Smoke inhalation was deadly, claiming more victims than fire alone. Secondary infections, fluid in the lungs, tissue damage – all sorts of possibilities were flashing through Sara's mind, and she'd realized that without warning, she was thinking like a doctor again. For the first time in months, she felt useful.

  Then Lena had stopped her at the door to the bathroom, holding up her hand so that Sara would get the message that she needed privacy. Then, just before shutting the door, Lena had turned to Sara. 'I'm so sorry,' she'd said, her apology seeming so genuine that Sara could not believe this was the same woman who had been almost hysterical with fear and hatred five minutes earlier. 'I'm so, so sorry.'

  'It's all right,' Sara had assured her, smiling, letting Lena know that she was no longer alone in this. 'We can talk about it later, okay? We'll get Jeffrey in here and we'll all figure out what to do.'

  Lena had nodded, probably not trusting her voice.

  'I'll wait out here for you.'

  And Sara bad waited, standing outside the door, grinning like a fool, thinking about how much she was going to help Lena. Meanwhile, Lena was probably bolting down the stairs, laughing at how easy Sara had made her escape.

  Now, sitting at the plastic table in the dreary motel room, Sara felt her face redden with humiliation.

  'Stupid,' she said, standing up before the chair sucked out what little life was left in her.

  Cathy was right. Sara needed to do something. She picked up the Comet and the odd-smelling sponge she'd bought at the convenience store and headed toward the bathroom. For some reason, the sink was outside the door, a long counter that was burned at the edges where people had rested their cigarettes while they – what? – brushed their teeth?