“Old wood, I guess,” he said, turning the ladder right side up. “This house is a money pit, I hate to say. I get the roof fixed and the gutters fall off. I seal the deck and the footings start to sink.”
Sara looked under the deck, noting the standing water. “Is your basement flooded?”
“Thank God I don’t have one or it’d be high tide down there,” Jeb said, reaching into one of the leather pouches on his belt. He took out a gutter nail with one hand and fumbled for the hammer with the other.
Sara stared at the nail, making a connection. “Can I see that?”
He gave her a funny look, then answered, “Sure.”
She took the nail, testing its weight in her hand. At twelve inches, it was certainly long enough for the job of tacking up a gutter, but could someone have also used this type of nail to secure Julia Matthews to the floor?
“Sara?” Jeb asked. His hand was out for the nail. “I’ve got some more in the storage shed,” he said, indicating the metal shed. “If you want to keep one.”
“No,” she answered, handing him the nail. She needed to get back to her house and call Frank Wallace about this. Jeffrey was probably still in Atlanta, but certainly someone would need to track down who had bought this type of nail recently. It was a good lead.
She asked, “Did you get this at the hardware store?”
“Yeah,” he answered, giving her a curious look. “Why?”
Sara smiled, trying to put his mind at ease. He probably thought it was odd that she was so interested in the gutter nail. It wasn’t like she could tell him why. Sara’s dating pool was small enough without taking Jeb McGuire out of the picture by suggesting his gutter nails would be a good way to pin a woman to the floor so she could be raped.
She watched him secure the drooping gutter to the house. Sara found herself thinking about Jeffrey and Jack Wright in the same room together. Moon had said that Wright had let himself go in prison, that the chiseled threat to his body had been replaced by soft fat, but Sara still saw him as she had that day twelve years ago. His skin was tight to his bones, his veins sticking out along his arms. His expression was a carved study in hatred, his teeth gritting in a menacing smile as he raped her.
Sara gave an involuntary shudder. Her life for the last twelve years had been spent blocking Wright out of her mind, and having him back now, in whatever form, be it through Jeffrey or a stupid postcard, was making her feel violated all over again. She hated Jeffrey for that, mostly because he was the only one who could suffer any impact from her hatred.
“Hold on,” Jeb said, snapping her out of her reflection. Jeb cupped his hand to his ear, listening. The thumping noise was still there as water dripped into the downspout.
“This is going to drive me crazy,” he said, over the thump, thump, thump of the water.
“I can see that,” she said, thinking that five minutes of the dripping sound was already giving her a headache.
Jeb came down off the ladder, tucking the hammer back into his belt. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” she answered. “Just thinking.”
“About what?”
She took a deep breath, then said, “About our rain check.” She looked up at the sky. “Why don’t you come over to the house around two for a late lunch? I’ll get some takeout from the deli in Madison.”
He smiled, an unexpected nervous edge to his voice. “Yeah,” he answered. “That sounds great.”
26
Jeffrey tried to keep his focus on driving, but there was too much going on in his mind to concentrate. He had not slept all night, and exhaustion was taking over his body. Even after pulling over to the side of the road for a thirty-minute nap, he still did not feel like his head was on straight. Too much was happening. Too many things were pulling him in different directions at the same time.
Mary Ann Moon had promised to subpoena the employment records from Grady Hospital dating back to the time Sara had worked there. Jeffrey prayed that the woman was as good as her word. She had estimated that the records would be available for Jeffrey’s perusal sometime Sunday afternoon. Jeffrey’s only hope was that a name from the hospital would sound familiar. Sara had never mentioned anyone from Grant working with her back in those days, but he still needed to ask her. Three calls to her house had gotten him her machine. He knew better than to leave a message for her to call. The tone of her voice last night had been enough to convince him that she would probably never talk to him again.
Jeffrey pulled the Town Car into the station parking lot. He needed to go home to shower and change, but he also had to show his face at work. His trip to Atlanta had taken more time than planned, and Jeffrey had missed the early morning briefing.
Frank Wallace was walking out the front door as Jeffrey put the car in park. Frank tossed a wave before walking around the car and getting in.
Frank said, “The kid’s missing.”
“Lena?”
Frank gave a nod as Jeffrey put the car in gear.
Jeffrey asked, “What happened?”
“Her uncle Hank called at the station looking for her. He said the last he saw of her she was in the kitchen right after that Matthews went south.”
“That was two days ago,” Jeffrey countered. “How the hell did this happen?”
“I left a message on her machine. I figured she was lying low. Didn’t you give her time off?”
“Yeah,” Jeffrey answered, feeling guilt wash over him. “Hank’s at her house?”
Frank gave another nod, slipping on his seat belt as Jeffrey pushed the car past eighty. Tension filled the car as they drove toward Lena’s house. When they got there, Hank Norton was sitting on the front porch waiting.
Hank jogged to the car. “Her bed hasn’t been slept in,” he said as a greeting. “I was at Nan Thomas’s house. Neither one of us had heard from her. We assumed she was with you.”
“She wasn’t,” Jeffrey said, offering the obvious. He walked into Lena’s house, scanning the front room for clues. The house had two stories, like most homes in the neighborhood. The kitchen, dining room, and living room were on the main level, with two bedrooms and a bath upstairs.
Jeffrey took the steps two at a time, his leg protesting at the movement. He walked into what he assumed was Lena’s bedroom, searching for anything that might make sense of all of this. A hot pain was at the back of his eyes and everything he looked at had a tinge of red to it. Going through her drawers, moving clothes around in her closet, he had no idea what he expected to find. He found nothing.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Hank Norton was talking to Frank, his words a hot staccato of blame and denial. “She was supposed to be working with you,” Hank said. “You’re her partner.”
Jeffrey got a brief flash of Lena in her uncle’s voice. He was angry, accusatory. There was the same underlying hostility he had always heard in Lena’s tone.
Jeffrey took the heat off of Frank, saying, “I gave her time off, Mr. Norton. We assumed she would be at home.”
“Girl blows her head off right under my niece and you just assume she’s gonna be okay?” he hissed. “Jesus Christ, that’s the end of your responsibility, giving her the day off?”
“That’s not what I meant, Mr. Norton.”
“For fuck sakes, stop calling me Mr. Norton,” he screamed, throwing his hands into the air.
Jeffrey waited for the man to say more, but he turned suddenly, walking out of the kitchen. He slammed the back door behind him.
Frank spoke slowly, visibly upset. “I should’ve checked on her.”
“I should have,” Jeffrey said. “She’s my responsibility.”
“She’s everybody’s responsibility,” Frank countered. He started searching the kitchen, opening and closing drawers, going through cabinets. Frank obviously wasn’t really paying attention to what he was doing. He slammed the cabinet doors, more to work out his anger than to look for anything concrete. Jeffrey watched this for a while, then walked toward the window. He
saw Lena’s black Celica in the driveway.
Jeffrey said, “Car’s still here.”
Frank slammed a drawer closed. “I saw that.”
“I’ll go check it out,” Jeffrey offered. He walked out the back door, passing Hank Norton, who was sitting on the steps leading into the backyard. He was smoking a cigarette, his movements awkward and angry.
Jeffrey asked him, “Has the car been here all the time you were gone?”
“How the fuck would I know that?” Norton snapped.
Jeffrey let this slide. He walked to the car, noting the lock was down on both doors. The tires on the passenger’s side looked fine and the hood of the car felt cool as he walked around it.
“Chief?” Frank called from the kitchen door. Hank Norton stood as Jeffrey walked back toward the house.
“What is it?” Norton asked. “Did you find something?”
Jeffrey walked back into the kitchen, spotting instantly what Frank had found. The word CUNT had been carved on the inside door of the cabinet over the stove.
“I don’t give a good goddamn about subpoenas,” Jeffrey told Mary Ann Moon as he sped toward the college. He held the phone in one hand and drove with the other.
“One of my detectives is missing right now, and the only lead I’ve got is this list.” He took a breath, trying to calm himself. “I have got to get access to those employment records.”
Moon was diplomatic. “Chief, we have to go through protocol here. This isn’t Grant County. We step on somebody’s toes and it’s not like we can make nice at the next church social.”
“Do you know what this guy’s been doing to women here?” he asked. “Are you willing to take responsibility for my detective being raped right now? Because I guarantee you that’s what’s happening to her.” He held his breath for a moment, trying not to let that image sink in.
When she did not respond, he said, “Someone carved something on a cabinet in her kitchen.” He paused, letting her absorb that. “Do you want to take a guess as to what that word is, Ms. Moon?”
Moon was silent, obviously thinking. “I can probably talk to a girl I know in records over there. Twelve years is a long time. I can’t make guarantees they’ll keep something like that handy. It’s probably on microfiche at the state records building.”
He gave her his cell phone number before ringing off.
“What’s the dorm number?” Frank asked as they drove through the gates of the college.
Jeffrey took out his notepad, flipping back a few pages. “Twelve,” he said. “She’s in Jefferson Hall.”
The Town Car fishtailed as he stopped in front of the dormitory. Jeffrey was out the door and up the steps in a flash. He pounded his fist on the door to number twelve, throwing it open when there was no answer.
“Oh, Jesus,” Jenny Price said, grabbing a sheet to cover herself. A boy Jeffrey had never seen before jumped up from the bed, slipping on his pants in one practiced movement.
“Get out,” Jeffrey told him, walking toward Julia Matthews’s side of the room. Nothing had been moved since he had been here last time. Jeffrey did not imagine Matthews’s parents felt much like going through their dead daughter’s things.
Jenny Price was dressed, more bold than she had been before. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
Jeffrey ignored her question, searching through clothes and books.
Jenny repeated the question, this time to Frank.
“Police business,” he mumbled from the hallway.
Jeffrey turned the room upside down in seconds. There had not been much to begin with, and as with the search before, nothing new turned up. He stopped, looking around the room, trying to find what he was missing. He was turning to search the closet again when he noticed a stack of books by the door. A thin film of mud covered the spines. They had not been there the first time Jeffrey had searched the room. He would have remembered them.
He asked, “What are those?”
Jenny followed his gaze. “The campus police brought those by,” she explained. “They were Julia’s.”
Jeffrey clenched his fist, wanting to pound something. “They brought them by here?” he asked, wondering why he was surprised. Grant Tech’s campus security force was comprised of mostly middle-aged deputy dogs who hadn’t a brain between them.
The girl explained, “They found them outside the library.”
Jeffrey forced his hands to unclench, bending at the knee to examine the books. He thought about putting gloves on before touching them, but it was not as if a chain of custody had been maintained.
The Biology of Microorganisms was on top of the stack, flecks of mud scattered along the front cover. Jeffrey picked up the book, thumbing through the pages. On page twenty-three, he found what he was looking for. The word CUNT was printed in bold red marker across the page.
“Oh my God,” Jenny breathed, hand to her mouth.
Jeffrey left Frank to seal off the room. Instead of driving to the science lab where Sibyl worked, he jogged across the campus, going the opposite direction he had gone with Lena just a few days ago. Again, he took the stairs two at a time; again, he did not bother to wait for an answer to his knock outside Sibyl Adams’s lab.
“Oh,” Richard Carter said, looking up from a notebook. “What can I do for you?”
Jeffrey leaned his hand on the closest desk, trying to catch his breath. “Was there anything,” he began, “unusual the day Sibyl Adams was killed?”
Carter’s face took on an exasperated expression. Jeffrey wanted to smack it off him, but he refrained.
Carter said in a self-righteous tone, “I told you before, there was nothing out of the ordinary. She’s dead, Chief Tolliver, don’t you think that I’d mention something unusual?”
“Maybe a word was written on something,” Jeffrey suggested, not wanting to give too much away. It was amazing what people thought they remembered if you asked them the right way. “Did you see something written on one of her notebooks? Maybe she had something she kept close by that someone tampered with?”
Carter’s face fell. Obviously, he remembered something. “Now that you mention it,” he began, “just before her early class on Monday, I saw something written on the chalkboard.” He crossed his arms over his large chest. “Kids think it’s funny to pull those kinds of pranks. She was blind, so she couldn’t really see what they were doing.”
“What did they do?”
“Well, someone, I don’t know who, wrote the word cunt on the blackboard.”
“This was Monday morning?”
“Yes.”
“Before she died?”
He had the decency to look away before answering, “Yes.”
Jeffrey stared at the top of Richard’s head for a moment, fighting the urge to pummel him. He said, “If you had told me this last Monday, do you realize Julia Matthews might be alive?”
Richard Carter did not have an answer for that.
Jeffrey left, slamming the door behind him. He was making his way down the steps when his cell phone rang. He answered on the first ring. “Tolliver.”
Mary Ann Moon got right to the point. “I’m in the records department right now, looking at the list. It’s everybody who worked on the first-floor emergency department, from the doctors to the custodians.”
“Go ahead,” Jeffrey said, closing his eyes, blocking out her Yankee twang as she called out the first, middle, and last names of the men who had worked with Sara. It took her a full five minutes to read them all. After the last one, Jeffrey was silent.
Moon asked, “Anybody on there sound familiar?”
“No,” Jeffrey responded. “Fax the list to my office if you don’t mind.” He gave her the number, feeling as if he had been punched in the stomach. His mind conjured the image of Lena again, nailed to a basement floor, terrified.
Moon prompted, “Chief?”
“I’ll have some of my guys cross-reference it with voter polls and the phone book.” He paused, debating whether
or not to go on. Finally, good breeding won out. “Thank you,” he said. “For looking that list up.”
Moon did not give him her customary abrupt goodbye. She said, “I’m sorry the names didn’t ring any bells.”
“Yeah,” he answered, checking his watch. “Listen, I can be back in Atlanta in around four hours. Do you think I can get some time alone with Wright?”
There was another hesitation, then, “He was attacked this morning.”
“What?”
“Seems the guards at the lockup didn’t think he deserved his own cell.”
“You promised to keep him out of the general population.”
“I know that,” she snapped. “It’s not like I can control what happens when he goes back inside. You of all people should know those good old boys operate by their own rules.”
Considering Jeffrey’s behavior yesterday with Jack Wright, he was in no position to defend himself.
“He’ll be out of it for a while,” Moon said. “They cut him up pretty bad.”
He muttered a curse under his breath. “He didn’t give you anything after I left?”
“No.”
“Is he sure it’s somebody who worked in the hospital?”
“No, as a matter of fact.”
“It’s somebody who saw her at the hospital,” Jeffrey said. “Who would see her at the hospital without working there?” He put his free hand over his eyes, trying to think. “Can you pull patient files from there?”
“Like charts?” She sounded dubious. “That’s probably pushing it.”
“Just names,” he said. “Just that day. April twenty-third.”
“I know the day.”
“Can you?”
She obviously had covered the mouthpiece on the phone, but he could still hear her talking to someone. After a few beats, she was back on the line. “Give me an hour, hour and a half.”
Jeffrey suppressed the groan that wanted to come. An hour was a lifetime. Instead, he said, “I’ll be here.”