Skin Privilege

by Karin Slaughter

  Lena did not move to pick up the picture. She stared at it from a distance, taking in the black bruises on the young woman's thighs, the bloody pulp of her face. The red burns around her feet and wrists indicated that she had been held spread-eagle, strong hands pulling back her arms and legs so that she would be open to any violation.

  Ethan's last girlfriend.

  She was black.

  The phone stopped ringing as Lena stared at the photograph. The room turned deathly quiet. The air felt more stifling. The girl in the picture must have been lovely, her skin a soft milk chocolate. Like Lena, she wore her hair long, with curls that would have brushed her shoulders if her head had not been yanked back, her hair matted with blood.

  Evelyn Marie Johnson, aged nineteen. College student. Soprano in the church choir. Lena thumbed through the file, looking for more pictures. She skipped past the pages of lurid crime scene photos and found what must have been the woman's school picture. It was a stunning 'before.'

  Silky black hair, bow-tie lips, big brown eyes. She could have been a model.

  Lena found the crime scene report. Tire tracks had been found near her body. The impressions had been sent to the lab, which matched the tires to Ethan's 1989 GMC truck. He was out on bail for the check kiting, awaiting sentencing. He flipped for a deal that would keep him out of jail if he testified against the killers.

  According to the girl's sister, Evelyn had been taken from her house by four white men in the middle of the night. The sister had hid in the closet because she had seen the swastikas on their bald heads, knew what the tattoos meant.

  According to Ethan, he had been forced at gunpoint to take the men to Evelyn's house. The year before, he had tried to leave the militant neo-Nazi group calling themselves the Church of Christ 's Chosen Soldiers, but they would not let him go. One of his former friends had stayed in the truck that night, holding Ethan at gunpoint, while the others went inside and abducted Evelyn, Ethan was then forced to drive them deep into the woods. His hands were tied with clothesline to the steering wheel, the keys to his truck thrown on the empty seat beside him. He sat there while he watched five men assault Evelyn and beat her to death.

  Ethan claimed the men had then gotten into a Jeep that had been parked in the clearing and drove off. He further claimed that he had used his teeth to pick at the knots in the rope that tied his hands to the steering wheel, and that this had taken him at least an hour. Once he was free, he had not gotten out of the truck, not gone to his girlfriend, because he could already tell that she was dead.

  Instead, he drove home.

  The phone started to ring again and Lena 's heart stuttered. She closed the file, her hands shaking, feeling as if she had just let something evil out -something that would stalk her like a rabid animal, not resting until she was punished. This was just how Ethan had been on the outside: relentless, savage, cunning. He had told Lena that he would never let her go and she had forced him away, pried his fingers from her life and sent him back to hell where he had come from.

  Was Ethan reaching out to Hank in order to get to her?

  She should just leave it be. None of this had anything to do with her. The Ethan part of her life was over. Whatever reason had compelled him to make those calls to Hank was none of her business. It did not explain who had killed Lena 's father and mother. It did not explain why Hank had lied to her all of those years, or why he was pushing himself into an early grave.

  Lena snatched up the phone to stop the ringing. 'What?'

  'It's Rod.'

  'Who?'

  'Rod,' the voice repeated. 'From the desk?'

  The carrot-headed idiot. 'What do you want?'

  'Somebody keeps calling to see if you're in.'

  Lena opened the file again, scattering pages and photographs as she looked for Ethan's prison intake sheet. 'A man or a woman?'

  'Woman,' he answered. I told her you were out. Figured when you didn't answer the phone that you didn't want to be bothered. That cool with you?'

  Lena found the number she was looking for. 'Can you get me an outside line?'

  'I was just-'

  If her stupid cell phone worked in this place, she would've already hung up. She enunciated each word clearly. 'I said I need an outside line.'

  'Hold on.' The kid heaved a pitiful sigh so she'd know that he was doing her a favor. There was a click, then she had a dial tone.

  Lena dialed the long-distance number, her hands still trembling. She stood to pace, glancing at the clock by the bed. It was past midnight.

  The switchboard picked up, a recorded voice told her to listen to the message because it had recently changed. She pressed the zero key and nothing happened. She pressed it a couple of more times and the phone started to ring. After twenty-three rings, a polite-sounding man answered, 'Coastal State Prison.'

  Lena looked down at the floor, saw the photograph at her feet.

  'Hello?'

  'This is Detective Lena Adams with the Grant County Police Department.' She gave her badge number, reciting it twice as he wrote it down. 'I need to arrange a meeting with one of your prisoners for first thing in the morning.' Her eyes were locked on the school photo of Evelyn again, the curly black hair, the warm smile on her perfect lips. 'It's urgent.'

  THURSDAY AFTERNOON

  SEVENTEEN

  Jeffrey tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as Sara sat beside him talking on her cell phone. Lena 's knife had not killed Boyd Gibson. Jeffrey had known deep in his gut that there was no way she had killed the man. Obviously, someone was trying to frame her for the murder. That somebody could very well be the reason Lena had left the hospital. She was a cop to her core. Lena would have taken one look at Jake Valentine and known the only way the sheriff could solve a crime is if somebody handed him the pieces. That was why she ran. She was out there trying to put together the pieces for him.

  The only problem was explaining how the murderer had gotten Lena 's knife. She had carried the blade for a while now. There was no way she would give it up without a fight. Whoever had taken the knife off her might have injured Lena in the process. Was that why she'd hidden out at the school? Jeffrey should have followed Valentine and examined the blankets they'd found. If there was blood on them, then Lena might be in even more trouble than he'd suspected.

  'Okay.' Sara had his notepad in her lap and she scribbled something down, saying, 'Right, okay,' into the phone. He guessed from the arrows she was scrawling that she was taking directions, and hoped she'd be able to decipher the words once they were on the road. Sara had the worst hand-writing of anyone he'd ever met.

  'Thanks,' she finally said, closing the phone. She told Jeffrey, 'There's a Holiday Inn about forty minutes from here.'

  Just the thought of the clean, reliable hotel chain made him smile. 'We're moving up in the world.'

  'It's about time.' Sara put on her seat belt. I am so ready to get out of this place.'

  He turned the ignition key and the engine purred to life. 'Tell me something,' he began, indicating the glowing satellite navigation screen on the dashboard. 'Does this thing have a memory on it?'

  'Hank's address right?' She started to toggle through the options, looking for the address. Jeffrey shook his head as he watched her. She hated to use a cell phone, would barely touch a computer, and refused to do anything more complicated with the DVD player than press play, but somehow, she had figured out the navigation system well enough to breeze through the screens.

  Jeffrey drove out of the lot and headed toward town. 'It's near the school,' he told her. 'You could walk there pretty easily.'

  Sara found the directions. The tinny, woman's voice told him to prepare to take a right in three hundred feet. In Jeffrey's opinion, the engineers had made a big mistake when they chose the voice for a computer. Nothing annoyed a man more than hearing a woman tell him where to go.

  Sara said, I have that map I bought at the convenience store somewhere in the suitcase. Downtown is just a big rectangle wi
th a forest in the middle. I'd bet you good money there are all kinds of trails through there.'

  Jeffrey loved the way her mind worked. 'Trails Lena could have used to get from the hospital to Hank's the night she escaped.'

  'Or that she's been using over the last few days to get around without being seen.'

  Jeffrey waited for the computer to finish telling him to bear left. 'You mind if we check that out after we get to Hank's?'

  'Of course not.'

  Jeffrey followed the prompts, driving past the town dump and the high school, one looking remarkably like the other. They saw the courthouse and the Elawah County Library, which both shared the same squat, 1950s feel as the other municipal buildings in town.

  He took a left onto Corcoran Court and recognized where they were. He pointed to the satellite system, asking Sara, 'Can you turn that thing off?'

  She pressed a button, toggled the dial, and the tinny voice stopped mid-sentence.

  The silence was unbelievably welcome.

  Jeffrey pulled up outside Hank's house. The cruiser he'd seen there the day before was gone. He guessed Valentine had called in the troops to search the school.

  'This is it,' he told Sara.

  'It's…' She didn't finish the thought. There weren't a whole lot of nice things you could say about the place. Hank's house was by far the biggest dump on the block.

  'His car is gone,' Jeffrey told her.

  She raised an eyebrow. 'Did you put out an APB?'

  I left that to Jake.'

  'Was the mailbox like that when you were here before?'

  'Yes.' He saw that it was still duct-taped onto the post, the door hanging by a thread. 'Cherry bomb,' he said, knowing the signs.

  When he'd been a kid, Jeffrey and two of his friends had cherry-bombed just about every mailbox in the neighborhood one Halloween. Unfortunately, they hadn't been smart enough to cover their tracks. The sheriff had simply knocked on the doors of the only three houses in the neighborhood that still had undamaged mailboxes in their front yards.

  Jeffrey got out of the car and went around to open Sara's door.

  She looked up at Hank's house as she got out, frowning. 'Do you think it was always like this?'

  Jeffrey took in the weeds growing in the front yard, the patches of raw wood showing where the paint had chipped off. 'Looks like it.'

  'It makes you wonder.'

  'What's that?'

  'If maybe somewhere,' she began, her voice troubled, 'the mother of our child is living like this.'

  He hadn't been thinking about that; the adoption was an oasis to go to when things got too overwhelming. She was right, though. People from good homes and solid families usually didn't feel compelled to give up their children. That wasn't to say they were any better than poor people, but usually the well-off were able to pay somebody else to raise their kids if they didn't want to do it themselves.

  'Oh, God.' Sara covered her mouth and nose with her hands. 'Do you smell that?'

  Jeffrey nodded, not wanting to open his mouth for fear of something coming out. Unnecessarily, he put out his hand to stop her from going up the front steps.

  'Is it a body?'

  He hoped to hell not. 'Wait here.'

  The smell got worse the closer he got to the house. Jeffrey stopped, seeing that the front door had been busted open and hastily repaired with duct tape. The tape looked new.

  Jeffrey glanced at Sara. 'Stay there, all right?'

  She nodded, and he raised his hand to knock on the door. The door shook from the impact, but the tape held. He knocked a little harder and guessed from the way the door moved that it had been taped from the inside as well.

  After several knocks with no answer, he turned back to Sara. 'What do you think?'

  'I think if I hadn't been standing here you would have busted down that door ten minutes ago.'

  She was right. A good kick just under the knob sent the door flying. The jamb was busted out, the recess for the lock completely missing. Sharp metal edges jutted into the air like knives where the flashing had been ripped from the wood. Jeffrey drew his gun, giving Sara a nod to stay put before heading into the house.

  He stood in Hank's living room, looking around, trying to get his bearings. The windows had probably never been opened and the fug of cigarette smoke and rotting meat made his lungs tighten in his chest. Trash was everywhere – old pizza boxes and takeout containers, soiled underclothes, stacks of papers and magazines that looked damp from the heat.

  All of this was nothing compared to the smell. In his almost twenty-year law enforcement career, Jeffrey had smelled a lot of bad things, but nothing could ever compete with the stench permeating

  Hank Norton's house. With each step, it got worse. He couldn't tell if it was a putrid corpse or decaying trash that was making bile squirt up in the back of his throat. Sweat started pouring off his body, some kind of primal response to protect him from disease.

  There were two bedrooms; one of them had obviously belonged to Lena and her sister. The second had a mattress on the floor, the bureau spilling out clothes as if it had been searched by a thief. He found the source of the smell in the bathroom. The toilet bowl was broken in two, exposing what was basically an open sewer. Black shit caked the floor. A sledgehammer leaned against the wall, and he guessed someone, maybe Hank Norton, had used it to bust open the toilet.

  Jeffrey gagged, backing out into the hall. Instinctively, he took a deep breath, but there was no fresh air to clear his lungs.

  A swinging door to what must have been the kitchen stood closed on the left.

  'Hank?' he called. 'Hank Norton or anyone in here, this is the police.'

  There was no answer, and Jeffrey looked down to see what his shoes were crunching. Saltine crackers, he thought.

  'Hank?'

  Slowly, Jeffrey put the toe of his foot against the swinging door. He pushed it open, gun aimed at the space in front of him. He could see the kitchen was the largest room in the house. The cabinets were the old metal kind, the sink rusted cast iron. He swung the kitchen door wide, thinking that the smell wasn't as bad in here, or maybe Jeffrey was just getting used to it.

  'Jeff?' Sara called. From the sound of it, she was standing in the front doorway.

  'Don't come in here,' he warned.

  Sara asked, 'Are you all right?'

  'I'm fine,' he told her, trying to open the window over the sink. It was stuck, and he had to holster his gun and use both hands to force it up.

  Jeffrey stood at the window, breathing the fresh air. The weeds in the backyard were higher than the ones in the front, but he could easily see the body lying on the ground.

  It was Lena.

  He ran toward the back door, yanking it open. There were boxes stacked on the back deck, blocking the path. Jeffrey kicked them aside, scattering leaflets into the air. 'Sara!' he yelled. 'Come to the back!'

  When he got to the body he stopped. He was wrong. This wasn't Lena. It was Hank Norton. The man's body was emaciated, his face sunken. Open needle wounds pocked his arms.

  'Sara!' Jeffrey yelled again, kneeling down beside the man. 'In the back!'

  He pressed his head to Hank's chest, trying to see if the man was breathing. Jeffrey heard nothing.

  'Sara!' he tried again, but she was already pushing open the gate to the backyard. He saw her relief when she realized he was okay, then her astonished expression when she saw the body.

  She dropped to her knees and pushed him aside. 'Did you find him like this?'

  Jeffrey nodded, taking out his cell phone to call an ambulance. 'Is he alive?'

  'Barely.' She opened Hank's eyelids, checking his pupils. Jeffrey could see dark blood in the sclera.

  Streaks of dried blood flaked from his mouth and ears. 'Hank?' she asked, voice raised. 'It's Sara Linton, Lena 's friend. Can you hear me?' She patted his face with a firm hand. 'Hank? I need you to open your eyes.'

  Jeffrey was giving the nine-one-one operator Hank's address when Sa
ra held up her hand for silence. She pressed her ear to Hank's chest. 'He stopped breathing.'

  Jeffrey ended the call as Sara started chest compressions. 'The ambulance should be here in ten minutes.'

  She nodded, then bent down to put her mouth over Hank's.

  Shocked, Jeffrey pulled her away, yelling, 'Sara, no! There's blood.'

  'I can't just sit here while he-'

  'Look at him, Sara. He's an IV drug user.'

  'He's all Lena 's got.' Sara leaned over Hank again, pressing into his chest, forcing blood through his heart. Jeffrey knew she wasn't really thinking about Hank right now. She was thinking about Jimmy Powell and the other patients she had not been able to help. She was remembering what it felt like to lose them.

  Jeffrey told her, 'Get the CPR kit out of your trunk.' She hesitated, and he said, 'I'll take over here.' Finally, she let him take her place. He overlapped his right hand with his left and pushed the heel of his hand into Hank's chest, counting between repetitions.

  Sara jogged toward the gate, but not before saying, 'Don't stop compressions.'

  Jeffrey felt sweat dripping down his back as he leaned over Hank, the sour odor of the man filling the air around them. He could not believe Sara had not given it a second thought before leaning down to put her mouth against Hank's bloody lips. Looking at the man, it was obvious he didn't give a shit what he put into his body. He could've infected Sara with anything, and for what? So Hank would die tomorrow instead of today?

  Just as Jeffrey was thinking his effort was useless, Hank made a gurgling sound, red-tinged air bubbles popping on his lips. Jeffrey sat back on his heels, watching the old man's eyes slit open as he struggled to breathe. He saw Jeffrey and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head, as if he could not understand why he had been brought back, why anyone would care.

  Sara burst through the gate, CPR kit in hand.

  'It's going to be okay,' Jeffrey told Hank, taking the man's dry, waxy hand. 'You're going to be fine.'