Skin Privilege

by Karin Slaughter

  Lena followed the car in front of her, turning off the highway and going toward downtown Reece. She passed the motel but did not turn in, the thought of the dark, lonely room too much to handle. Without realizing it, she had made the decision to go through Hank's things tonight. She would get some big trash bags and throw out the trash as she went along.

  Maybe she could find a way to dispose of Deacon's body.

  As she passed the high school, the car ahead of her slammed on the brakes and Lena turned the steering wheel hard, trying to avoid an accident. Her head slammed into the steering wheel as she skidded into the oncoming lane. The Celica stopped just short of rolling into the ditch. Her heart was in her throat as her brain processed what had happened. She could feel blood trickling down the side of her head and she wiped it away as she pushed open the door.

  Up ahead was a white Escalade.

  Lena reached under the seat and grabbed her folding knife. She flipped the blade open and got out of the car.

  The streetlights nearly blinded her, or maybe the crash had jostled her brain. She felt dizzy and sick, her head pounding like a drum. Lena squinted, trying to see inside the SUV. The rear window slid down with a mechanical whirl. Charlotte Warren sat in the backseat. Duct tape covered her mouth. Her eyes were wide with terror.

  Hank's dealer got out from behind the wheel, leaving the door open. Lena clenched her fist around the pearl-handled knife, ready to use it, but the man simply grabbed her by her hair and threw her toward the Cadillac like a sack of flour.

  'Get in,' he said. Her knife was in his hand. She must have dropped it. He folded down the blade and tucked it into his back pocket while she was watching.

  Lena pushed away from the car, but he threw her back toward the open driver's door. Charlotte gave a muffled yell and Lena saw that another man was sitting beside her. This one wore a black ski mask. Surgical gloves covered his hands. He held a gun to Charlotte 's head. His smile sent a cold shiver through her body.

  He said, 'Get in.'

  Lena didn't move.

  He pressed the muzzle of the gun to Charlotte 's temple. 'Get in or I'll kill her right now.'

  Lena got in.

  THURSDAY EVENING

  NINETEEN

  Jeffrey sat on the front steps of Hank Norton's house as he studied the street map of downtown Reece. Sara had ridden in the ambulance with Hank so that she could manage his care on the ride to the hospital. Jeffrey knew without asking that she would want to stay with him until his condition was stabilized. Sara had cut her teeth as an ER doc. She wouldn't leave Hank's side until she was sure he was in capable hands.

  That left Jeffrey with plenty of time to search the man's house. First, he had opened every window that would budge in the hopes that the place would air out. While he was waiting for this miracle to occur, he checked the shed in the backyard. Other than rat shit and about a hundred boxes full of paper so old it was starting to pulp, he found nothing. The old Chevy pickup was empty, the cab floor so rusted that the bench seat had fallen through.

  The clothes Hank had worn were by the fence. Jeffrey guessed from the way the pants, shirt, and underwear trailed along the lawn that the old man had taken them off as he walked into the backyard. After the paramedics had shifted Hank to the gurney, Jeffrey had checked the grass underneath the man's body. Jeffrey took comfort in the discovery. When he'd first seen Hank lying in the grass, he'd thought Lena 's uncle had lain there for days, waiting for someone to discover him. The ground underneath his emaciated frame would have been dry if he'd been therfe overnight.

  Jeffrey was biding his time, pacing around the backyard, when his foot found the soft, wet earth over the septic tank. Obviously, the system had backed up into the house. Whoever had taken a sledgehammer to the toilet bowl had broken the natural seal and allowed raw sewage to spew out into the house. A plumber would have to suck out the septic tank, then some poor bastard would have to get a shovel and take care of the rest of it. As far as Jeffrey was concerned, the easiest thing to do would be to rent a bulldozer and push the whole damn house down.

  After waiting half an hour for the odor to dissipate, he was able to go back inside without dry-heaving. Even with the windows open, rotting food and the various insects it attracted made Jeffrey gag so many times that bile had made his throat raw. He'd felt odd looking through Lena 's girlhood bedroom. Like most parents, Hank had not changed much when the girls left and like most children, Lena and Sibyl had left behind the crap they didn't want to take with them. When Jeffrey found himself faced with Lena 's underwear drawer, he decided to move on to Hank's room.

  As he went through the man's things, Jeffrey got the distinct impression that this wasn't the first time the house had been searched. He didn't know if this was Lena 's doing or someone else's. He did know that when he pulled back the duct tape from around the front door, the splintered wood around the jamb looked newly damaged..

  Lena knew how to kick in a door. She also knew how to perform a thorough search. Knowing she could have done either of these things to her uncle's house did not come as a consolation. Jeffrey knew she was hiding out, sleeping at the school, or at least she had been until now, but what had she been doing in the daytime? Why was she still in Reece?

  Jeffrey gave up wondering what Lena was up to as his search finally ended up in the kitchen. He supposed the stacks of Alcoholics Anonymous pamphlets on the table and the empty syringe he found under the chair was what you'd call irony, but Jeffrey wasn't in the mood to play word games with himself. He'd wiped the chair opposite Hank's and sat down at the table, wondering what would make a man do this to himself. It was suicide, plain and simple.

  Finding nothing in the house but an overwhelming sadness, Jeffrey had shut the window in the kitchen and gone around the rest of the house to make sure everything was pretty much as he'd found it. He grabbed a roll of duct tape he'd seen in the kitchen and taped the bathroom door shut, sealing the edges as best he could. The window inside was wide open, but he doubted even the most desperate thief would brave the disgusting bathroom to get into the house.

  For the next half hour, he wrestled with the front door. No matter how many different ways he tried, the metal flashing sticking out from the jamb kept the door from closing. Jeffrey tried to hold it down with his fingers, but all that did was end up giving him the equivalent of a metal paper cut on the tips of his fingers. Finally, he found a screwdriver in the kitchen and used the flat end to hold the metal strip flush to the door so he could close it.

  His plan had been to leave the house through the kitchen door, but Jeffrey had a strange feeling as he started to pull the back door shut. He had the feeling he had missed something. Once more, he walked through the house, turning on all the lights, checking each room to see if anything jumped out at him. All that hit him was the odor. Hank must have moved from room to room, trying to outrun the decay, and finally ended up in the kitchen. Jeffrey went back to the living room. He was breathing through his mouth, trying not to gag again from the smell, when he saw the painting over the couch.

  This had to be Lena 's mother. She had the same olive skin and piercing eyes. She wore her hair a little shorter, but it looked almost the same as Lena 's did now. Her neck had that same swan-like curve and Jeffrey could tell from looking at her that she had that same attitude that some women took as threatening and most men took as sexy. Jeffrey imagined she'd been quite the draw to the locals. It would have taken a cop's arrogance to look past that haughty tilt to the woman's chin and the wry amusement in her eyes.

  Jeffrey finally left the house, turning the thumb latch on the knob to lock the kitchen door. He'd left all the lights on in hopes of discouraging burglars, or maybe it was the thought of going back into the depressing house that made him not bother.

  He was finished fucking around with this. A woman had been burned alive. Jeffrey had been shot at. A man had been stabbed to death and thrown through their window. Hank Norton was on his deathbed at the hospital.


  It was time to find Lena.

  Jeffrey sat on the front steps and studied the map until he found the route he was looking for. Sara had been right about the town being laid out in a large rectangle with a forest in the middle. There would be trails through the forest, shortcuts that had been used for years. Maybe even a fort or some kind of hastily built shelter where kids went to smoke pot and get laid. When Jeffrey was a teenager, he'd had a similar hideout. It wasn't a big stretch to think there was one in Reece, too.

  Jeffrey had given Sara his cell phone because the battery on hers was dead. He went to the BMW and took her phone off the charger, slipping it into his pocket and locking the car before heading toward the end of the street. Given Hank's current condition, there was no way the old man had helped Lena in her escape from police custody. This left Lena on her own, which meant she had left the hospital by foot. Looking at the map, Jeffrey could see the path she might have taken from the hospital to Hank's house. He assumed she had come here first to search for money. The house had been turned upside down by somebody. That somebody could very well have been Lena.

  Jeffrey doubted very seriously that the cruiser Jake Valentine had sent to the house the night of Lena 's escape acted as a deterrent. Hank's backyard connected to his neighbors'. Lena could have easily gone in through the back door without anyone on the street noticing. If Deputy Don Cook was in that cruiser, he was probably doing the crossword and eating some crackers while she ransacked the house.

  He was losing what little daylight was left standing there thinking about all this. Jeffrey took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves as he walked up the street. He passed the high school, and wondered where Lena was going to sleep now that the classroom wasn't an option. Hank's bar had burned down, but he remembered Valentine telling him that the police tape on the door had been cut. Jeffrey shook his head, thinking if Lena had been staying at the bar all this time while Jeffrey and Sara were next door at the motel, he was going to kill her.

  There was only one certainty in all of this, and that was that Lena would have to go somewhere for shelter. She would need food, clothes, water. Jeffrey looked up at the sun, wishing he had brought some water with him. Of course, given the state of the house, it was probably wise he hadn't ingested anything there.

  At the top of the hill, he took out the map again, checking to make sure he was still on the right route. He saw skid marks on the road where two cars had almost collided and figured a couple of kids had narrowly missed getting their cars totaled.

  Jeffrey could hear traffic from the highway as he took the next left. A large field on his right led into a dense forest, and he wondered if this was the same forest that backed onto the motel. Jeffrey consulted the map again and saw that it was. Lena could have walked from Hank's to the bar. The hospital was just a few streets over.

  As expected, there were all kinds of trails crisscrossing the field. It was colder inside the forest and he put his jacket back on. There were no signs of secret hiding places, no trash other than some cigarette butts and more empty beer bottles than he

  could count. Jeffrey could still see the sun peeking through the limbs and he made sure to keep it on his right as he walked a straight line toward the motel. He kept checking his watch as he walked so that he wouldn't lose his sense of time, which always moved more slowly when you thought you were lost.

  Jeffrey was starting to get a little nervous when he heard the stream that he'd seen behind Hank's bar the other night. Briefly, he had the entertaining idea that he might find whatever Boyd Gibson had dropped, but by the time he reached the bank of the stream, he'd pretty much given up on that miracle happening.

  Jeffrey saw the room he and Sara had shared. Someone who wasn't exactly handy had nailed a large sheet of plywood over the broken window. The door was ajar, and Jeffrey poked his head in and checked to make sure they had gotten all of their things. The room looked exactly as they'd left it, but for some reason, Jeffrey didn't find the place as disgusting. Maybe it was because he'd spent a couple of hours in Hank's house. He didn't know how Lena had stood it.

  'Shit,' Jeffrey whispered. Lena hadn't stood it. There was no way she'd stayed in that house. She wasn't exactly a neat freak, but no sane human being would sleep in that pigsty.

  Jeffrey jogged to the front office. The night clerk was gone, but an orange-haired teenager was sitting behind the counter playing video games on the computer.

  The kid didn't look up from the screen as he jabbed his thumbs at the buttons. 'What's up?'

  'Was somebody, a woman, staying here last week about this tall.' Jeffrey held up his hand to indicate Lena 's height. 'Brown hair, brown eyes-'

  'You mean Lena?' The kid kept his eyes glued to the screen.

  Jeffrey reached over the counter and ripped the controller out of his hand. 'Give me the key to her room.'

  'The sheriff's already checked-' The kid seemed to understand this didn't matter. He quickly handed Jeffrey the passkey, saying, 'Room fourteen. It's on the second floor.'

  Jeffrey bolted up the stairs. He jammed the key in the lock and threw open Lena 's door as if he expected to find her standing there with a full explanation.

  She wasn't.

  He closed the door behind him and dropped the key on the plastic table. Lena 's toiletries were neatly lined by the sink, her clothes still folded in her suitcase. Jeffrey couldn't begin to know what, if anything, was missing because he didn't know what she had packed. Still, he opened all the drawers, checked the nightstand, even looked under the sink.

  There was nothing except a rusted flathead screwdriver that had rolled under the air conditioner by the window.

  Jeffrey sat on the bed, trying to think. He had never seen Lena carry a purse, but then carrying a bag wasn't conducive to the job. He would have to ask Sara about that. Or maybe Valentine would be the person to question since the sheriff had already checked the room. On second thought, there was no need to let the sheriff know he'd gotten one up on Jeffrey.

  Jeffrey stood from the bed and lifted up the mattress, finding the remnants of what he guessed had been a couple of Cheetos but nothing else. He dropped the mattress, a rush of air blowing back on him. Jeffrey's olfactory system was understandably out of whack since his time at Hank Norton's, but he could have sworn he'd gotten a whiff of gun oil. He flipped the mattress off the bed and knelt down to examine the bedskirt that covered the boxspring. Glad that no one could see him, he sniffed around the thin cotton, stopping when he heard a key sliding into the lock on the door.

  Jeffrey stood up just as the door opened. The maid did a double take when she saw him, a scowl on her face.

  She demanded, 'What the fuck are you doing?'

  'Can you come back in ten minutes?'

  'Can you put that mattress back where it belongs?' Jeffrey didn't snap to, and she tucked her hands onto her hips. 'I ain't got all day, mister.'

  He took out his badge and showed it to her.

  She squinted at the tiny letters, unimpressed. ' Grant County. Sounds like a real shithole. You with the mattress division, checking to see if people pulled off the tags?'

  Jeffrey put the mattress back in place, hoping he could keep her talking. 'Did you ever meet the woman who was staying here?'

  'The one what gave Jake the slip?' She chuckled, walking into the room. 'And to think I voted for that dipshit.'

  ' Lena 's a friend of mine,' he told the woman. 'I'm trying to help her out.'

  'Ain't you the gallant knight.' She took a rag out of her pocket and started wiping down the phone on the bedside table, mumbling, 'Must've used the phone a lot. Damn greasy fingerprints are all over it,' Her head was bent, but she looked up at Jeffrey as if she was wondering why he was still here.

  'Thanks for your help,' he told the woman, though the opposite was the case.

  Jeffrey was halfway toward the stairs when he realized the maid may have been more helpful than she'd intended. He hadn't seen Lena 's cell phone in the hotel room, so it must have bee
n in her car. Frank Wallace, his second in command, could run a records check to see who she had been talking to before the night the Escalade was torched, or maybe even after. He would also put out his own APB on Hank's Mercedes and maybe have Frank call in a few favors with the Highway Patrol to see if they could keep an eye out for Lena. As with Jeffrey's phone, Sara's couldn't get a cell signal at the hotel, so he would have to call Frank on the walk back.

  Jeffrey stopped on the bottom stair. Christ, what an idiot. If he couldn't get a cell signal at the hotel, neither could Lena.

  He jogged toward the front office again. This time, the kid was waiting at the counter, ready to serve. He asked, 'Find anything?'

  Jeffrey shot back his own question. 'Did Detective Adams make any phone calls while she was here?'

  'She made a long-distance one before she left.'

  Jeffrey knew from his own bill that the motel charged fifty cents a minute for local calls and two dollars a minute for long distance. The calls were big money and the motel would keep exact records. 'Let me see all of her calls.'

  The teenager pulled a stack of papers off the printer. 'There was only one,' he explained. 'Got a nine-one-two area code.'

  The number looked familiar. 'That's Savannah.'

  'Yeah, I think so.'

  Jeffrey grabbed the phone off the counter and dialed the number.

  LENA

  TWENTY