Skin Privilege

by Karin Slaughter

She crawled back across the attic on her hands and knees, then dropped down onto the kitchen chair. Lena reached around the access panel and moved the box back in place. When she was finished, she found a rag in the bathroom and wiped the trim around the panel's opening so that her dirty fingerprints didn't show. She put the chair back in the kitchen, turned off all the lights but the one over the kitchen sink, then locked the door behind her.

  She felt like a criminal as she drove her Celica through town. Hell, she was a criminal. Not only had she failed to report Deacon's death, she'd hidden the body, wiped off her fingerprints. She could just imagine sitting in Al Pfeiffer's office, the old fart leering at her as she told him what had happened. Al would find Hank. He'd bring him in and have him up on murder charges before Lena could even open the phone book and look for a lawyer.

  Some of the outside lights were on at the bar as Lena pulled up, but there were no other cars in the lot. She assumed the lights were on timers, but then saw the rigged cords where Hank had strung together some cheap solar panels. The bulbs were a pale, fading orange and she doubted they would stay on for much longer. She leaned over and got the flashlight out of the glove compartment before getting out of the car.

  Tape with the logo of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms still crisscrossed the front door. Lena checked the seal with her flashlight to make sure it hadn't been broken before heading to the back of the building. She felt the hair on the back of her neck go up as she crossed out of the semi-lit parking lot and walked along the dirt path that led to Hank's office. Considering the week she was having, she didn't think her paranoia an unhealthy emotion.

  She had tried to cover the hole she'd kicked in the wall of Hank's office with a couple of trashcans from the bar. Unless you knew what you were looking for, the damage wasn't as obvious as she'd thought. She glanced over her shoulder, shined her light toward the woods, before pushing aside the trashcans and going into the office.

  Inside, the shack looked exactly as she'd left it. She couldn't decide if it was a good thing or a bad thing that Hank hadn't been back. Deacon Simms was dead. Other than Charlotte Warren, Hank didn't have any friends he could turn to. There was no couch he could crash on, no spare room he could hole up in.

  The checkbook was still open on his desk. She sat down in the chair and went back through the register. As far as she could remember, everything was the same as when she'd found Charlotte 's letters. Still, Lena flipped through the checks, making sure none were missing. Next, she went through the desk again, this time looking for anything that might connect to Deacon Simms. All she found was Hank's spare set of keys under a beat-up old copy of I Am the Cheese.

  Lena pocketed the keys and flipped through the book, which bore the stamp of the Elawah County Library on the spine. Glued on the back of the cover was a paper pocket with a checkout slip tucked inside. 'Lena Adams' was scribbled on the strip where she'd signed out the book a billion years ago. She'd needed it for an English paper. Lena had loved the book but blown off the assignment. When the teacher had called Hank to let him know, Lena had lied, told him she'd lost the book. In addition to tanning her hide, Hank had made her pay for the book out of her allowance.

  And the asshole had kept it this entire time.

  Lena tossed the book onto the desk, accidentally knocking over a stack of receipts. She was scooping them up, trying to put them back in a pile, when she saw the telephone underneath. The phone was old, the kind they started making shortly after getting rid of the rotary dial. Lena reached behind it and followed the cord under the desk, looking for the answering machine. She guessed that as with the electric supply, Hank hadn't bothered to pay the phone company to get service all the way out to the shack. The galvanized pipe with the extension cord that led back to the bar was about two inches round – there was plenty of space for a long telephone extension cord.

  She tucked the checkbook under her arm and knelt down to leave the shack through the hole.

  There wasn't anything worth stealing in the office, but she moved the trashcans back in front of the hole.

  The back door of the bar was padlocked, but that had been Hank's doing, not the drug agents. As with the front door, ATF had stuck their usual tape across the jamb but she easily cut the seal with one of the keys. Lena matched the Kryptonite key to the padlock, then a smaller Yale key to the deadbolt. The metal door groaned as it opened, the pungent odor of stale smoke and beer spilling into the night air.

  The soles of her shoes snicked across the rubber fatigue mats as she walked through the kitchen. Something ran over her foot and she stood stock still, hoping that it was just a rat then hoping that it was alone. She used her flashlight to find the light switch, her mind conjuring a host of rabid rodents eager to attack. There was a noise in the corner that she chose to ignore as she walked to the front of the bar.

  Lena coughed, her lungs not quite used to the stale smoke and lack of oxygen. She turned on the light switches as she walked through, one of them triggering the jukebox into starting up in the middle of a song. Trash was scattered everywhere and she saw the sheen of spilled drinks that had left sticky spots on the linoleum. It didn't take a detective to read this scene. The cops had come in, cleared everybody out, made their arrests, and turned off the lights on their way out.

  Suddenly, Lena remembered something. She knelt down behind the bar and rapped the floor with the back of her knuckles, straining to hear over the jukebox. She finally found what she was looking for and took out her knife to pry up a tile. Underneath, she saw a cigar box cradled between the joists. Hank's hidden stash. Lena opened the box; there was about two thousand dollars in it. She hesitated, feeling suddenly like a thief. This was Hank's money. Was it stealing from him if she took it so he couldn't buy dope?

  She stood on the top of the bar and tucked the money behind a bottle of scotch that was so cheap the coloring had turned to sediment in the bottom. She jumped down and returned the empty cigar box to its hiding place. Some country crooner Lena didn't recognize was just dipping into a ballad as she pressed her heel into the tile, snapping it back in place. She felt better now, like she had done something to help Hank instead of contributing to his demise.

  The telephone was behind the bar under the cash register, just where it always was. The answering machine beside it read twelve calls. Lena pressed play, and figured that the most recent calls came first when her own voice said, 'Hank, it's Lee. Where are you?' She was shocked at her tone as it echoed in the bar, the anger that radiated from every word. Did she always sound this hateful when she called him? Lena shook her head; another thing she couldn't think about right now.

  The next call was from Nan, Sibyl's lover. Her words were kinder but her message was clear, 'I haven't heard from you in a few days and I was getting worried. Please let me know if you're doing all right.'

  Message ten came on, a staticky silence Lena was about to fast-forward through when she heard the beginning of an automated message that made her stomach knot.

  Georgia, like just about every state in the union, used an electronic system to handle calls from prison inmates. A computerized voice announced the prison from which the call originated and advised the listener to be sure they understood the charges before they pressed a button to okay the call. Then, every two minutes, the same automated voice came on the line to remind the recipient that he or she was talking to an inmate in a state prison. The exorbitant charges helped pay for listening software to monitor inmate calls as well as protect unsuspecting strangers from getting a twenty-dollar bill for a two-minute call.

  The recording was pretty standard, first announcing the origin of the call, then allowing a three-second spot for the inmate to say his name. Over the years, for various cases, Lena had listened to some of the inmate calls coming out of the Grant County jail. It was amazing what the perps could fit into the short bursts the three seconds allowed. They seldom said their names – it was more like the world's fastest opportunity to beg somebody to talk to yo
u. They ranged from, 'Mama, I love you, please talk to me,' to her personal favorite, 'I'm gonna kill you, bitch,' from a man who kept insisting to the judge that he posed no threat to his wife.

  Hank's machine played the fifth message, a duplicate to the four that preceded it. 'This is a collect call from an inmate in Coastal State Prison. Press one if you wish to talk to inmate-'

  Lena put her hand on the bar to hold herself up. She let the machine play, her throat feeling as if she had swallowed glass.

  Five times the same message played, five times she heard his voice. She could not stop herself. She listened to the next one, then the next. All of them were the same. All played that hard, emotionless voice that seemed to echo the computer's own.

  The number one flashed on the machine as the final message played.

  'This is a collect phone call from an inmate at Coastal State Prison. Press one if you wish to talk to inmate-' Lena held her breath, hoping it would be different this time, that this was all some kind of sick joke.

  It was not.

  The speaker captured his voice perfectly, playing his slow, sure cadence as he enunciated each word.

  'Ethan Green.'

  Lena ripped out the machine and threw it against the wall.

  THURSDAY MORNING

  FIFTEEN

  Back in Grant County, Sara had a helper, or diener, who performed the less glamorous tasks relating to autopsy. Carlos catalogued all the surgical tools, kept up with the samples, took the X-rays, cleaned up the substantial mess, and basically made Sara's job far easier just by being in the room. He took notes, weighed organs, and – most important -performed a duty known as 'running the gut,' which meant standing over a sink and cleaning out the bowels so the contents could be examined and weighed. The task was as odious as it sounded, and handing it off to someone else was a gift from heaven.

  The word 'diener' was German for 'servant,' but Sara had always thought of Carlos as her assistant, a vital part of her job. If she'd ever doubted his value, not having him around to help was a harsh reminder. Even Jeffrey doing his best yesterday was better than going it alone. From the minute she'd opened the freezer and seen Boyd Gibson lying facedown on a gurney, Sara had known her day was going to be as long as it was difficult.

  At five-foot-eleven, Sara was hardly dainty, but she nearly threw out her back maneuvering Gibson onto the metal gurney. The dead man's body was solid as a brick, comprised of as much muscle as fat. He was thickly built, what her father would have called a fireplug, but through a process of pushing and pulling she managed to get him out of the body bag and onto the table without dislodging the knife from his back.

  After taking X-rays to document the position of the knife, Sara took the body back to the main room of the morgue, where she measured for weight and height. Next, she started on the man's shoes and clothes. The sneakers were loosely tied, probably a year old. His jeans and underwear were newer, but not by much. She found his wallet with most of the usual contents chained to one of his belt loops. A leather sheath was attached to his belt, the hand tooling matching the design on the bone handle of the knife it held. The artwork wouldn't have been Sara's first choice: a hunting scene with two hounds chasing pheasant out of the woods.

  After checking to make sure the hole in the shirt lined up with the hole in Gibson's back, she carefully cut off the shirt, photographing her actions as much as she could. Considering the antiquated autopsy suite, Sara was surprised by the sophistication of the digital camera. Jeffrey had taken the photographs yesterday, but she was quickly becoming adept at using the many features. The macro zoom was better than the one she had at home, and the large LCD on the back let her scroll through the pictures to make sure she'd gotten exactly what she wanted.

  She took a few shots of the clothes lying on the paper she'd spread out on the counter, then examined the material for trace evidence. Other than dirt and a few hairs that looked to belong to the victim, Sara found nothing remarkable on Boyd Gibson's clothes. Likewise, his New Balance sneakers were muddy but seemingly innocuous.

  Still, she carefully bagged and catalogued every item, taking particular care to record the contents of the man's wallet: a driver's license for Boyd Carroll Gibson, aged thirty-seven, one Delta SkyMiles American Express card, one Bank of Elawah Visa card, two snapshots of what looked to be bluetick hounds sitting by a stream and five dollars in cash. Either Boyd Gibson was an exceptionally neat man or someone had screened the contents of his wallet. Sara made a note to mention this to Jeffrey.

  She picked up the camera again and photographed the nude body, zooming in around the knife – Lena 's knife. When Sara had first seen the weapon last night, she'd known instantly who it belonged to. The look on Jeffrey's face had confirmed the belief. She could tell then that he didn't want to share the information, didn't want to admit that Lena was more than a passive spectator in this mess they had gotten themselves into.

  And what about Hank? It would have taken two people to swing Boyd Gibson through the motel window. Sara had only met Lena 's uncle a few times, but from her recollection, Hank Norton was a slight man, and not very tall. If he wasn't Lena 's accomplice, then who was? There was no way Lena had managed to do this alone.

  Or maybe she hadn't done this at all. Just because the knife belonged to Lena did not mean that she had been the one to stab the man. Sara had to keep an open mind. She couldn't go into the autopsy with preconceived notions or she'd blind herself to other possibilities.

  Sara leaned over Gibson's body, going in for a tighter shot of the stab wound. She frowned, noticing a discrepancy between the size of the blade and the size of the wound. The handle of Lena's knife was almost exactly perpendicular to the body – traveling slightly upward and perhaps a few inches to the left, suggesting a right-handed killer, who'd come from behind and stabbed into the heart. Yet, the elongated shape of the wound indicated that the knife had gone in at an angle from an extremely superior position. Lena was right-handed, but she was roughly five feet four inches tall. Either the knife had been bumped in transport or Lena had stood on a ladder to stab him.

  Knowing the Elawah sheriff's office, Sara would have bet half her paycheck that the knife had been bumped during transport. She made a note to ask Jake Valentine about this. The inconsistency was just the type of detail a defense lawyer longed for. Sara would have to be very specific how she described the wound in her notes in case this ever ended up in court. Otherwise, she would be torn apart on cross-examination.

  Then again, the deposition Sara had given in the malpractice suit had pretty much proved that no matter how thorough you were, no matter how carefully you prepared yourself, there was always some greedy jackal of a lawyer out there who could twist your words to suit their cause.

  Sara muttered a few expletives in the name of lawyers before she continued the external examination.

  She found a few cuts and scrapes on the palms that most likely came from sliding down the bank of the creek outside Hank's bar. The burn marks on the man's arms were unremarkable and certainly survivable barring a radical infection. The singed hair would have grown back in a few months, the eyelashes in a few weeks. Surprisingly, Gibson had only one tattoo, the ugly red swastika Jeffrey had pointed out the night before. Usually these guys were as marked up as a bathroom wall. Sara used one hand to press a small metal ruler against the tattoo and with the other held the camera as she documented the size and detail.

  She stopped, putting down the camera to make more notes, wishing not for the first time that Jeffrey were there to help speed along the process. They had developed a rhythm yesterday, and she found herself wanting him there if only to share her observations on the body. Gibson had a series of old scars crisscrossing his back that made Sara think that at some point he'd been whipped with a belt or something similar. There was a long, white scar down the side of his right thigh that appeared to be from an open fracture.

  The timer on the X-ray developer buzzed, indicating the films were ready, and S
ara studied them on the ancient light box hanging by the door. Dark lines told the story: signs of an old spiral fracture in the left forearm, as well as long ago posterior, lateral breaks in the ribs. The skull showed long-healed fractures across the suture line. Indications of a long bone shaft fracture dated back at least ten years. If Sara had to guess, she'd say that Boyd Gibson had been severely abused as a child.

  She turned back to the body, unable to keep herself from feeling sorry for the man. How many postmortem X-rays had she seen in Grant County exactly like this? It was very seldom she came across a dead criminal whose body did not reveal some sign of childhood abuse. As a pediatrician, she had to wonder about the people in Boyd Gibson's early years. How had he hidden such abuse from his teachers, his doctor, his pastor? How many times had Gibson's mother or father made an excuse about clumsiness or boyhood exuberance to cover for broken bones and concussions? How many adults had ignored the evidence before their eyes and believed them?

  While childhood abuse certainly didn't excuse the man's adult actions, Sara could not help but wonder whether Boyd Gibson would have ended up on her table if he'd had a happy childhood.

  Of course, there were plenty of people out there in the world who had suffered worse than this and they didn't turn into Nazi drug dealers. Or end up killing them.

  Had Lena done this horrible thing? Had she stabbed this man in the back? Sara couldn't see it for the same reason she couldn't see Lena burning someone alive. The woman had a temper, true, but if Lena Adams killed someone, she would be looking them in the eyes when, she did it.

  Hardly a defense, but the truth was often awkward.

  Sara turned her focus to the murder weapon. She could tell from the powder marks on the pearl handle that Jake Valentine had already dusted it for prints. From the looks of it, nothing had been lifted. Lena would have known to use gloves, to wipe down the weapon. Was that when the knife had dislodged, as she cleaned the handle of her prints?