“Did you notice them?”
“The body was in the water for a long time. I’m not sure what I saw except for the knife wound in the neck.”
The detail bothered him, mostly because it was the first point where Frank Wallace’s story didn’t dovetail with Lena’s. “Have you found Spooner’s car?”
“She doesn’t have one.”
“That strikes me as odd.”
“It’s a college town. Kids walk everywhere or drive their scooters.” Lena shrugged. “If they need to go somewhere, they can usually bum a ride.”
“Could Allison have a car without you knowing about it?”
“Not at the school. They’ll tow you if you take up two spaces. They’re really good about policing the campus. And, there aren’t a lot of places around town to ditch a car, either. I can put out a BOLO at the morning briefing if you want, but it’s a dead end. This isn’t Atlanta. If people see abandoned cars, they call the police.”
Will studied Lena, trying to read any deceit. “What about Allison’s boss at the diner? Have you talked to him?”
“Lionel Harris. Frank said he talked to him last night. He doesn’t know anything.”
Either Frank had lied or Lena was making things up as she went along.
Will asked, “How does Mr. Harris look for the murder?”
“He’s got one leg and he’s older than Jesus.”
“I’ll take that as an unlikely.” Will opened the red folder. The photocopy of Tommy Braham’s confession was on top. He saw a flash of recognition in Lena’s eyes. “Take me through it.”
“Which part?”
He knew she was expecting him to get straight to the point—the stabbing, what went down outside the garage. He went the opposite direction, hoping to throw her off. “Let’s start with you bringing Tommy Braham into the station and work our way forward. Did he say anything in the car?”
“No.”
Will hadn’t yet seen the booking pictures or the crime scene photos Sara had taken of Tommy Braham in the cell, but he knew that a cop had been stabbed while two other able-bodied officers were at the scene. He hazarded a guess about what happened next. “What condition was Tommy in at this time?”
She stared at him blankly.
“Did he fall down a couple of times during the arrest?”
Again, she took her time. “You’ll have to ask Frank about that. I was tending to Brad.”
“You saw Tommy in the car. What kind of state was he in?”
Lena pulled a spiral-bound notebook out of her back pocket. She slowly flipped to the pages she wanted. Will saw the paper was taped back into the notebook and assumed these were the originals Sara had photocopied last night.
Lena cleared her throat. “I brought in the suspect, Thomas Adam Braham, at approximately eight-thirty yesterday morning.” Lena scrutinized him. “You’re not going to take notes?”
“Why, do you want to let me borrow your pen?”
Her composure cracked just a tiny bit, and Will saw what he had been looking for from the minute Lena walked into the room. No matter what she thought about Tommy Braham, she was upset about his death. Not upset because it might get her into trouble, but upset because he was a human being who had been in her care.
Will said, “I’ve already read your notes, Detective. Tell me the parts that aren’t on the pages.”
She started picking at the Band-Aid.
“Who did the death notifications?”
“I did.”
“On both Spooner and Braham?”
She nodded. “Elba, where Allison’s from, is a small town. The detective I talked to went to school with her. He says her mother died eight years ago. The father’s unknown. There’s an aunt, Sheila McGhee, but she’s not home much. She works for a crew that’s remodeling roach motels along the Panhandle. The detective’s going to try to track her down. I left a message on her answering machine, but she won’t hear it until she gets home or calls to check her messages.”
She was actually sounding like a detective now. Will asked, “No cell phone?”
“Not that I can find.”
“Was there an address book in Allison’s apartment?”
“We didn’t have time to do a search.” Her tone became clipped again. “A lot was going on yesterday. My partner was bleeding to death in the street.”
“I’d like to know when Ms. McGhee returns your call.”
She nodded.
“What about Tommy’s relations?”
“There’s just his dad, Gordon. I talked to him early this morning, told him what happened.”
“How did he take it?”
“No father wants to hear that his son’s confessed to murder.”
“How did he take the suicide?”
“About how you’d expect.” Lena looked down at her notes, though Will could tell she was buying time to collect herself. “Gordon’s driving up from Florida right now. I don’t know how long that’ll take. Seven, maybe eight hours.”
Will wondered where Frank Wallace was in all of this, and why the hardest parts of the case had fallen to Lena. He asked, “Did you know Allison Spooner?”
“Half the town did. She worked at the diner down the street.”
“Did you know her?”
“I never met her.”
“You don’t go to the diner?”
“Why does that matter?” She wasn’t looking for an answer. “Tommy laid it all out. You’ve got his confession right in front of you. He said that he wanted to have sex with her. She didn’t. So he killed her.”
“How long did it take for him to confess?”
“He dicked around for about an hour, then I got it out of him.”
“Did he offer an alibi? Initially, I mean.”
“He said he was at the vet. He’s got this dog, Pippy. She swallowed a sock or something. Tommy took her to the emergency vet over on Conford. The office staff can’t vouch for him being there the entire time.”
“Does he have a car?”
“A green Chevy Malibu. It’s at the shop. Tommy said the starter’s been acting up. He dropped the keys in the lockbox at Earnshaw’s yesterday morning.”
Will hadn’t been expecting that. “Earnshaw?”
“Sara’s uncle.”
“Is there security footage of the lot?”
“No, but I called the garage. The car is there.” She shrugged. “Tommy could’ve left it there after he killed Allison.”
“Have you searched the car?”
“I planned on doing that today.” Her tone indicated that Will was the major obstacle standing between her and doing her job.
Will didn’t back down. “How did Tommy know Allison?”
“She rented space from his dad—a converted garage apartment.” Lena looked at her watch.
“What was Tommy like?”
“Stupid,” she told him. “Slow in his thinking. I’m sure Sara’s already told you all about it.”
“According to Dr. Linton, Tommy’s IQ was around eighty. He wasn’t bright, but he held down a job at the bowling alley. He was a good kid. Good except for the trouble he’d been in lately.”
“I’d call murder a bit more than trouble.”
“I was referring to the incident reports.”
She hid her surprise well, but he could see the flicker of a question in her eyes.
“There are three reports detailing altercations over the last month. Mrs. Simms was kind enough to provide them.” She remained silent, so he asked, “You knew about them, right?”
Still, Lena didn’t respond. Will slid the incident reports across the desk so she could see them.
She skimmed the summaries. “Small problems. He obviously had a temper.”
“Who told you to arrest Tommy for Allison’s murder?”
“Frank—” She looked like she wanted to take back the word. “Frank and I discussed it. It was a joint decision.”
At least he knew what she looked like when she was lying. The
bad news was that her lying face looked a lot like her honest one. “When did you first hear there was a body in the lake?”
“Brad called me around three yesterday morning. I woke everybody else up, started the investigation.”
“Have you talked to any of Allison’s teachers at school?”
“They’re all off for Thanksgiving break. I’ve got phone numbers for them, but I haven’t made any calls yet. Most of them are local. They’re not going anywhere. I was going to track them down this morning, but …” She held out her arms, indicating the space between them.
“What else were you going to track down?” He listed out her plans so far. “Talk to the teachers. Maybe talk to the office staff at the vet. Look at Tommy’s car. Try to track down Allison’s known associates. I guess you’d get that through the school, maybe Lionel Harris?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Were you planning on talking to Tommy again? Had he lived, I mean.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to get his confession on tape. He was a compelling witness against himself.”
“But everything else made sense to you—his motivations, stabbing her in the neck?”
“There were things I wanted to clear up. Obviously, I wanted to find the murder weapon. I assume it’s in his garage somewhere. Or his car. He must have taken Allison to the lake. There would have been trace evidence. Stop me if any of this reminds you of something you might have read in a textbook when you were in GBI school.”
“That’s a good word to use for it—‘textbook.’” He pointed out, “Seems like a lot of work for a case you considered closed. Isn’t that what you told me a few minutes ago, that it was closed?”
She stared at him again. Will knew she was waiting for him to ask about the 911 call.
He said, “You must be tired.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve had a pretty tough couple of days.” He indicated her field notes. “You got Brad’s call around three a.m. yesterday. Suspected suicide. You went to the lake. Found Spooner was dead, possibly murdered. Went to Spooner’s house and your boss got hurt, your partner got stabbed. You arrested Tommy. Got his confession. I’m sure you were at the hospital all night.”
“What’s your point?”
“Was Tommy a malicious person?”
She didn’t equivocate. “No.”
“Did he show any anger during your interrogation?”
She was silent again, gathering her thoughts. “I don’t think he planned to hurt Brad. But he did stab him. And he killed Allison, so …”
“So?”
She crossed her arms again. “Look, we’re just going in circles here. What happened to Tommy was bad, but he confessed to killing Allison Spooner. He stabbed my partner. Frank was hurt.”
Will carefully weighed her words. She obviously believed Tommy was guilty of killing Allison Spooner. She got sketchier when she talked about Brad Stephens being stabbed and Frank Wallace getting cut.
Lena checked her watch again. “Are we finished here?”
She was very good at this, but she couldn’t keep it up forever. “The lake is behind the station, right?”
“Right.”
“Between the college and Lover’s Point.”
“Not exactly between.”
“Do you think I can borrow a jacket?”
“What?”
“A raincoat. Jacket. Whatever you have.” Will stood up from the desk. “I’d like for us to go for a walk.”
THE RAIN HAD TURNED unrelenting, dark clouds rolling across the sky, tossing down buckets of water that all seemed to fall directly on Will’s head. He was wearing a police-issue jacket meant for a man with considerably more girth than Will carried. The sleeves hung down past his thumbs. The hood fell into his eyes. The reflective panels on the back and front slapped against him with every step.
Will had always had trouble finding clothes that fit, but usually the opposite was the problem: short cuffs, tight seams stretching against his shoulders. He had been expecting Lena to offer him one of her own coats as a sort of joke. Apparently, she had come up with a better idea. Will stared down at the stitching on the breast pocket as they made their way around the lake. The jacket belonged to Officer Carl Phillips.
He stuck his hands into the pockets as the wind picked up. He could feel some latex gloves, a measuring tape, a plastic pen, and a small flashlight. At least he hoped it was a small flashlight. Despite Lena’s worst intentions, the jacket was nice, a North Face rip-off with tons of zippered pockets and enough insulation to keep the wind out. Will had the brand-name version back at home. He hadn’t brought it because in Atlanta, cold weather never lasted more than a few days, and even then, the sun came up to burn off the chill. The thought of the jacket hanging in his closet gave him a longing to be back home that surprised him.
Lena stopped, turning back toward the police station. She raised her voice to be heard over the rain. “The college is back there, past the station.”
Will guessed they had been walking for about fifteen minutes. He could barely make out a bunch of buildings resting in the curve of the lake just beyond the police station.
Lena said, “There’s no reason for Allison to walk this way.”
“Where’s Lover’s Point?”
She pointed in the opposite direction. “That cove about a half mile away.”
Will followed the line of her finger to the indentation in the shoreline. The cove was smaller than he’d thought it would be. Or perhaps the distance made it seem that way. Large boulders were scattered along the shore. He imagined people built campfires when the weather was better. It looked like the kind of place a family might pull up a boat to for a long picnic.
“Are we just going to stand here?” Lena had her hands deep in her pockets, head down against the wind. Will didn’t need ESP to figure out she didn’t want to be out here in the pouring rain. It was so cold by the water that he had to fight to keep his teeth from chattering.
He asked, “Where are the roads again?”
She gave him a look that said she wasn’t going to play this game much longer. “There.” She pointed into the distance. “That’s the fire road. It hasn’t been used in years. We checked it when we pulled the body out of the lake. Nothing’s there.”
“That’s the only egress from here to Lover’s Point, right?”
“Like I showed you on the map back at the station.”
Will had never been good with maps. “That place over there.” He pointed to an area just past the cove. “That’s the second road that people normally use to get to the cove, right?”
“Empty, like I told you. We checked it, all right? We’re not total morons. We checked for cars. We checked for tire tracks, footprints. We checked both roads and neither one of them showed any signs of use.”
Will tried to get his bearings. The sun wasn’t doing much to help light the way. The sky was so dark that it could’ve been nighttime instead of smack in the middle of morning. “Where’s the residential area?”
She pointed across the lake. “That’s where Sara lives. Her parents. Over here”—she pointed farther along—“all of this shoreline, including where we’re standing, belongs to the State Forestry Division.”
“Do people take their boats out?”
“There’s a dock at the campus for the rowing teams. A lot of the homeowners go boating during the summer. No one would be stupid enough to be out here in this rain.”
“Except us.” Will put as much cheer into his voice as he could muster. “Let’s keep going.”
She trudged along ahead of him. Will could see her sneakers were soaked. The running shoes he had found in the back of his car weren’t faring much better. Allison’s shoes, or at least the ones found near her body, were dirty, but not caked in mud. If she had walked along the shore, the terrain had been a lot harder than the red Georgia clay that was sliding out from under his feet.
Will
had checked the weekly weather report last night on his computer. Temperatures had been lower the morning Allison was found, but the same rain they were seeing now had been pounding down the night before. It was a good time to kill somebody. Trace evidence on the shore would be lost. The cold water would make guessing when the murder occurred next to impossible. Except for the 911 caller, no one would have known there was a body in the lake.
Lena slipped in the mud. Will reached out, catching her before she fell into the water. She was so light that he could almost pick her up with one hand.
“Christ.” She braced her hand against a tree. She was breathing hard. He realized she had been walking fast to keep a few paces between them.
Will asked, “Are you okay?”
She pushed away from the tree, a look of determination on her face. Will watched her feet as she picked her way across the large roots and fallen branches that riddled the shoreline. He had no way of knowing whether or not Allison had made her way to Lover’s Point along this same route. His goal was to get Lena Adams out of the station, out of her element, so that she would talk to him. Between the pounding rain and the rough going, he was thinking that it might be wise to set the bar lower. For instance, he could aim not to let them both freeze to death.
Lena was so certain that Tommy Braham had killed Allison Spooner—just as certain as Sara was that Tommy had not. Will felt caught in the middle, and was mindful that it would be wrong to let either woman influence his thinking. He supposed for Lena the question of Tommy’s innocence carried with it a lot more guilt than she wanted to shoulder. To believe otherwise would mean that the kid had killed himself for nothing. That she had given him the means—and the motivation—to take his life. For Sara’s part, admitting Tommy was a murderer would mean admitting that Lena wasn’t as ruthless as she wanted to believe.
Will didn’t feel the rain let up so much as hear it. The constant tapping of water against leaves died down to a gentle whisper. He heard a bird, a bunch of crickets. Up ahead, a large tree blocked the path. Thick roots jutted into the air, earth dripping from the tendrils. Lena lifted herself up and over. Will followed her, looking around, trying to get his bearings again. They were near the fire road. At least he thought they were.