Broken

by Karin Slaughter

  Lena focused on Marla for the first time. The old woman wasn’t one of her biggest fans. At best, she managed a nod for Lena when she walked through the door in the morning. Most times, she never bothered to look up from her desk. “Why are you talking to me? You never talk to me.”

  Marla bristled. “Excuse me for trying to help.” She turned on her heel and stomped out.

  Lena watched the door slowly close on its hinges. The room felt small, claustrophobic. She couldn’t stay here all day, but her instinct to hide from Will Trent was hard to overcome. Larry Knox had told Frank that Will was a suit, not a cop. Lena’s first impression had been the same. With his cashmere sweater and metrosexual haircut, Will looked like he’d be more at home behind a desk, clocking out at five and going home to the wife and kids. The old Lena would have dismissed him as a fraud, not on her level and not deserving of the badge.

  That old Lena had been burned so many times by her snap judgments that she’d practically self-immolated. Now, she could look past her knee-jerk reaction and see the truth. Will had been sent down by a deputy director who was a heartbeat away from the top job. Lena had met Amanda Wagner many years ago. She was a tough old bitch. There was no way Amanda would’ve sent her second string down here, especially at the request of Sara Linton. Will was probably one of the best investigators on her team. He had to be. In less than two hours, he had shattered Lena’s case against Tommy Braham into tiny pieces.

  And now she had to go back out there and face him again.

  Lena’s feet still ached from the long trek through the forest. Her shoes were soaking wet. She went to her locker. The combination left her mind as soon as she turned the dial. She pressed her forehead against the cool metal. Why was she still here? She couldn’t keep this up with Will Trent. There were so many lies and half-truths dangling out there that she couldn’t remember them all. He kept laying traps, and with each one, she felt herself getting closer and closer to falling in. She should go home before she said too much. If Trent wanted to stop her, he would have to do it with handcuffs.

  The combination came into her head. Lena spun the dial, opening the locker. She looked at her rain jacket, her toiletries, the various crap she’d collected over the years. There was nothing here she wanted except the extra pair of sneakers she kept in the bottom. She started to close the locker but stopped at the last minute. Inside a box of tampons was a picture of Jared that had been taken three years ago. He was standing outside Sanford Stadium at the University of Georgia. The place was packed. Georgia was playing LSU. There was a crowd of students around him, but he was the only one looking back at the camera. Looking back at Lena.

  This picture was the moment that she had fallen in love with him—outside that noisy stadium, surrounded by drunken strangers. Lena had actually managed to capture on film that exact moment when everything in her life had changed. Who would be around to capture it when it all changed back?

  Probably the booking officer who took her mugshot.

  The door popped open. Four patrolmen came in, so lost in conversation that they barely acknowledged Lena. She tucked Jared’s picture into her back pocket. Her socks were soaking wet, but she slid on her spare sneakers anyway. She just wanted to get out of here. She would walk through the squad room, right past Will Trent, get into her car and go home to Jared.

  Lena would start packing tonight. She’d be one of those people who left her house key in the mailbox for the bank. Her car was in good shape. She had enough in savings to last her three months, four if Jared didn’t expect her to help out with rent. She would move in with him and try to get over this, try to find a way to live her life without being a cop.

  If she wasn’t in jail for obstructing an investigation. If she wasn’t convicted of negligence. If Gordon Braham didn’t sue her into the ground. If Frank didn’t fill Jared’s ear with poison. Poison Jared would believe, because the great thing about lying was people believed it so long as the lie was close enough to the truth.

  Lena slammed the locker closed, pressing her hand against the cool metal.

  One of the patrolmen said, “You let that GBI asshole slip and hit his head, we’re not going to shed any tears.”

  They were all suiting up, pulling on their heavy rain gear. Will had taken photographs and samples from the bark and soil by the tree, but he had ordered a full-scale search of the woods. He wanted more photographs, drawings, diagrams. He wanted to make sure the force knew that they had made a mistake. That Lena had made a mistake.

  “Fucking retard,” another cop said.

  Lena didn’t know if he meant Will or Tommy. Either way, she managed some false bravado. “Wish he was a little smarter so he knew how stupid he was.”

  They were all laughing when she left the locker room. Lena pulled on her jacket. She walked through the squad room with more swagger than she felt. She had to get her composure back. She had to steel herself against the next barrage of questions from Will Trent. The fewer answers she gave him, the better off she would be.

  The paper Marla had given her was in her hand. Lena skimmed the words as she walked so she wouldn’t have to talk to anybody. She stopped as she reached the front door. She read the transcript again. The words were in her handwriting, but the last few lines from the call were missing. The caller had mentioned that Allison had gotten into a fight with her boyfriend. Why was that part taken out?

  She glanced at Marla behind the front desk. Marla stared back, one eyebrow raised above her glasses. She was either still pissed or sending Lena a message. It was hard to tell. Lena looked at the transcript again. The last part was gone, the cut clean so that you would never know it was missing. Had Marla taken a shot at tampering with police evidence? Frank had gone through her files last night. Why would he edit the transcript without telling Lena? Christ, she had her notebook in her back pocket with the original transcript. All Trent had to do was ask her to see it and Lena would be looking at an obstruction charge for tampering with evidence.

  The front door opened before Lena could reach it. Will Trent had obviously grown impatient waiting outside.

  “Detective,” he said by way of greeting. He’d changed back into his dress shoes and shed Carl Phillips’s jacket. He looked as eager as she was reticent.

  Lena handed him the paper. “Marla told me to give you this. She said you’d have to track down the audio from Eaton yourself.”

  Will called to Marla at the desk. “Thank you, Mrs. Simms.” He took the paper from Lena’s hand. His eyes scanned back and forth. “You heard the call, right?” He looked up. “You made the transcript from the audio?”

  “They dictated it to me from the screen. The audiotapes are stored off-site. They’re not hard to get.” Lena held her breath, praying that he would not ask her to track them down.

  “Any idea who made the call?”

  She shook her head. “It was a woman’s voice. The number was blocked and she wouldn’t leave her details.”

  “Did you make this copy for me?”

  “No. Marla handed it to me.”

  He pointed at a black dot on the page. “You’ve got some gum on the glass in your copier.”

  Lena wondered why the hell he was telling her this. Will Trent was like no cop she had ever seen. He had a habit of skirting around the real questions, making random comments or observations that seemed to lead nowhere until suddenly it was too late and she felt the noose tighten around her neck. He was playing chess and she was sucking at checkers.

  Lena tried her own diversion. “We should get out to the crime scene if you want to be back in time for the autopsies.”

  “Weren’t we just at the crime scene?”

  “We don’t know for a fact what happened. Tommy could’ve lied. That happens in Atlanta, right? Bad guys lie to the cops?”

  “More often than I’d like.” He slipped the transcript into his briefcase. “What time are the procedures supposed to start?”

  “Frank said eleven-thirty.”

 
; “This was when you talked to him last night?”

  Lena tried to remember the answer she had given Will the first time he’d asked this question. She had talked to Frank twice. Both times he had drilled her on Tommy’s confession. Both times he had renewed his threat to tear down her life if she didn’t cover his drunk ass.

  Lena cast out a nonanswer, hoping Will would bite. “It’s like I told you before.”

  He held open the front door for her. “Any idea why the press isn’t all over this?”

  “The press?” She would have laughed if she hadn’t been standing up to her knees in shit. “The paper’s closed for the holiday. Thomas Ross always goes skiing this time of year.”

  Will laughed good-naturedly. “You gotta love small towns.” A cold wind made him have to put his shoulder into closing the glass door. He tucked his hands into his jeans pockets. The cuffs of his pants were still wet. “Let’s take your car.”

  She felt uncomfortable having him in her Celica, so she nodded toward Frank’s Town Car. Lena pulled her key chain from her pocket. The county was on a tight budget and they both were supposed to share the car.

  She pressed the button to unlock the doors.

  Will didn’t get in. Instead, he scowled at the smell that wafted through the morning air. “Smoker?”

  “Frank,” she said. The stink was worse than usual. He must have chain-smoked the whole trip to and from Macon last night.

  Will asked, “This is Chief Wallace’s car?”

  She nodded.

  “Where’s Chief Wallace if this is his car?”

  Lena managed to swallow the bile in her throat. “He took a cruiser to the hospital.”

  Will didn’t comment, though she wondered if he’d made a mark in his book. Frank had taken the cruiser so he wouldn’t get stopped along the way. Speeding during a nonemergency situation was illegal, but it was the sort of illegal cops danced around all the time.

  Will asked, “Can you drive a stick?”

  It was her turn to scowl. Of course she could drive a stick.

  Will said, “Let’s take my car.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Lena had heard about the Porsche before she’d made it to the station this morning. The whole town was talking about it—what it must’ve cost, why a state investigator would be driving it, and, more important, that it was parked in front of the Linton house all night.

  Will didn’t wait to see if she followed as he walked toward the opposite end of the lot. He talked as he made his way to the car, his leather briefcase swinging gently at his side. “I’m curious about Allison Spooner. You said she’s from Alabama?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she’s a student at Grant Tech?”

  Lena was careful with her answer. “She’s registered at the school.”

  Will turned to her. “So, that means she’s a student?”

  “It means she’s registered. We haven’t talked to her teachers yet. We don’t know if she was actively attending classes. We get a lot of calls from parents this time of year wondering why they’re not getting report cards.”

  He asked her again, “Do you think Allison Spooner dropped out?”

  She tried a new strategy. “I think that I’m not going to tell you something unless I know it’s the absolute truth.”

  He gave one of his quick nods. “Fair enough.”

  Lena waited for another question, another insinuation. Will just kept walking, his mouth closed. If he thought this new technique was going to break her, he was dead wrong. Lena had been dealing with silent disapproval her entire life. She had made an art out of ignoring it.

  She tucked her head down against the cold. Her mind kept going back to her earlier conversation with Will. She had been so furious about him being in Jeffrey’s office that she hadn’t really paid attention to what he was saying at first. But then he had pulled out Allison’s wallet and she had seen that the third photograph was missing.

  The picture showed Allison sitting beside a boy who had his arm around her waist. An older woman sat on her left, some distance between them. They were all on a bench outside the student center. Lena had stared at the photo long enough to remember the details. The boy was around Allison’s age. He had been wearing the hood of his sweatshirt pulled down low on his head but she could tell he had brown hair and eyes. A smattering of a goatee was on his weak chin. He was chubby the way most of the guys at Grant Tech tended to be, from too many days spent in classrooms and nights wasted in front of video games.

  The woman in the photograph was obviously from the poor part of town. She was in her forties, maybe older. Past a certain age, it was difficult to tell with hard-looking women. The good news was that they stopped aging. The bad news was that they already looked ninety. Every line on her face said she was a smoker. Her bleached-blonde hair was so dry it looked more like straw.

  Also missing from evidence was Tommy’s cell phone. Frank had handed it to Lena in the street. He’d found it in Tommy’s back pocket when he frisked him before putting him into the back of the squad car. She had sealed the phone in a plastic bag, written out the details, and logged it into evidence.

  And at some point last night, both the photo from Allison’s wallet and Tommy’s phone had gone missing.

  There was only one person who could’ve hidden the evidence, and that was Frank. Marla said he’d gone through her files. He had probably doctored the 911 transcript, too. But why? Both the picture and the call brought up the possibility of Allison having a boyfriend. Maybe Frank was trying to track down the kid before Will Trent found him. Frank had told Lena that they both should stick to the truth, or at least a close version of it. Why was he going behind her back and looking for another suspect?

  Lena wiped her eyes with her hand. The wind was cutting, making her nose run, her eyes water. She had to carve out ten, fifteen minutes alone so she could think this through. Will’s presence made it impossible for her to do anything but worry about the next question that would come out of his mouth.

  “Ready?” Will asked. They had reached the Porsche. The car was an older model than Lena thought. There was no remote to unlock the door. Will did the honors, then handed her the key.

  Lena felt a new wave of nervousness wash over her. “What if I crash this thing?”

  “I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t.” He reached in and tucked his briefcase behind the front seat.

  Lena couldn’t move. This felt like a trap but she couldn’t see the reason.

  “Is there a problem?” Will asked.

  Lena gave in. She climbed into the bucket seat, which was more like a recliner. With her feet stretched toward the pedals, the back of her calves were only a few inches off the floorboard.

  Will opened the passenger door. She asked, “You don’t have a car from the job?”

  “My boss wanted me to get here as soon as possible.” He had to let the seat back before he got into the passenger’s side of the car. “It adjusts on the front,” he told Lena. She reached down and dragged herself closer to the steering wheel. Will’s legs were about ten feet longer than hers. Lena was practically pressed into the steering wheel by the time her feet found the clutch and gas.

  For his part, Will couldn’t get his seat right. He pushed it to the end of the track, then cranked it down as low as it would go so his head wouldn’t hit the roof. Finally, he folded himself into the car like a piece of origami. She waited for him to buckle in, chancing a look at him. He was fairly average except for his height. He was lean, but his shoulders were broad, muscled, like he spent a lot of time at the gym. His nose had obviously been broken at some point in his life. Faint scars were on his face, the sort of damage you got from fighting with your fists.

  No, he definitely was not Amanda Wagner’s second string.

  “All right,” Will said, finally settling into the seat.

  She reached toward the ignition, but there wasn’t one.

  “It’s on the other side.”

  She fou
nd the ignition on the left-hand side of the steering wheel.

  Will explained, “It’s from Le Mans racing. So you can start the engine with one hand while you change the gears with the other.”

  She was extremely right-handed and it took a few tries before she managed to get the key to turn. The engine roared to life. The seat vibrated underneath her. She could feel the clutch pushing back against the ball of her foot.

  Will stopped her. “Can you give her a few minutes to warm up?”

  Lena took her foot off the pedal. She stared across the street. He’d parked on the far side of the lot, the nose of the car facing out. She had a clear view to the children’s clinic across the way. Sara’s clinic. She wondered if he had parked here on purpose. He seemed to be very deliberate about everything he did. Or maybe her paranoia was such that she couldn’t watch his chest rise and fall without thinking it was part of some master plan to trip her up.

  Will asked one of his random questions. “What do you think about the 911 call?”

  She told him the truth. “It bothers me that it came from a blocked number.”

  “She called in a fake suicide. Why?”

  Lena shook her head. The caller was the last thing on her mind right now. “Tommy might have talked to her. She could be a co-worker. An accomplice. A jealous girlfriend.”

  “Tommy didn’t strike me as a player.”

  No, he hadn’t. During the interrogation, Lena had asked him to be explicit because she wasn’t sure he really knew what sex was.

  Will asked, “Did Tommy say anything about dating anyone?”

  She shook her head.

  “We can ask around. At the very least, the girl who called in the fake suicide knew something wasn’t right. She was obviously laying down a foundation for Tommy’s defense.”

  Lena’s head jerked around. “How so?”

  “The phone call. She said Allison got into a fight with her boyfriend. That’s why she was worried she’d committed suicide. She didn’t say anything about Tommy.”