“Has an autopsy been performed?”
“Not yet.”
“How do you know the stab wasn’t self-inflicted?”
“It looked—”
“How deep did it penetrate? What was the trajectory of the blade? Was there water in her lungs?”
Frank talked over her, an air of desperation to his voice. “She had ligature marks around her wrists.”
Sara stared at him. She had always known Frank to be an honorable man, yet she would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that he was lying through his teeth. “Brock confirmed this?”
He hesitated before shaking his head and shrugging at the same time.
Sara could feel herself getting angrier. She knew somewhere in the back of her mind that her anger was unreasonable, that it was coming from that dark place she had ignored for so many years, but there was no stopping it now—even if she wanted to. “Was the body weighted down in the water?”
“She had two cinder blocks chained to her waist.”
“If she floated with both hands hanging down, livor mortis could have settled into her wrists, or her hands could have rested at an angle on the bottom of the lake, making it look to the untrained eye as if she’d been tied up.”
Frank looked away. “I saw them, Sara. She was tied up.” He opened a file on his desk and handed her a piece of yellow legal paper. The top was torn where it had been ripped away from the pad. Both sides were filled. “He copped to everything.”
Sara’s hands shook as she read Tommy Braham’s confession. He wrote in the exaggerated cursive of an elementary school student. His sentence construction was just as immature: Pippy is my dog. She was sick. She ate a sock. She needed a picture took of her insides. I called my dad. He is in Florida. Sara turned the page over and found the meat of the narrative. Allison had spurned a sexual advance. Tommy had snapped. He’d stabbed her and taken her to the lake to help cover his crime.
She looked at both sides of the paper. Two pages. Tommy had ended his life in less than two pages. Sara doubted he’d understood half of it. The only time he’d used a comma was right before a big word. These, he printed in block letters, and she could see small dots where he had pressed the pen under each letter to make sure he’d spelled it correctly.
Sara could barely speak. “She coached him.”
“It’s a confession, Sara. Most cons have to be told what to write.”
“He doesn’t even understand what he’s saying.” She skimmed the letter, reading, “‘I punched Allison to subdude.’” She stared at Frank, disbelieving. “Tommy’s IQ is barely above eighty. You think he masterminded this fake suicide? He’s less than one standard deviation from being classified as mentally disabled.”
“You got that from reading two paragraphs?”
“I got that from treating him,” Sara snapped. It had all come flooding back to her as she read the confession: Gordon Braham’s face when Sara suggested his son might be developing too slowly for his age, the tests Tommy had endured, Gordon’s devastation when Sara told him his son would never mature past a certain level. “Tommy was slow, Frank. He didn’t know how to count change. It took him two months to learn how to tie his shoes.”
Frank stared back at her, exhaustion seeping from every pore. “He stabbed Brad, Sara. He cut me in the arm. He ran from the scene.”
Her hands started shaking. Her body surged with anger. “Did you think to ask Tommy why?” she demanded. “Or were you too busy beating his face to a pulp?”
Frank glanced back at the officers by the coffee machine. “Keep your voice down.”
Sara was not going to be silenced. “Where was Lena when all this happened?”
“She was there.”
“I bet she was. I bet she was right there pulling everybody’s strings. ‘The victim was tied up. She must have been murdered. Let’s go to her apartment. Let’s get everybody around me hurt while I walk away without so much as a scratch.’” Sara could feel her heart shaking in her chest. “How many people does Lena have to get injured—killed—before somebody stops her?”
“Sara—” Frank rubbed his hands over his face. “We found Tommy in the garage with—”
“His father owns the property. He had every right to be in that garage. Did you? Did you have a warrant?”
“We didn’t need a warrant.”
“Have the laws changed since Jeffrey was alive?” Frank winced at the name. “Did Lena identify herself as a cop or just start waving her gun around?”
Frank didn’t answer her question, which was answer enough. “It was a tense situation. We did everything by the book.”
“Does Tommy’s handwriting match the suicide note?”
Frank blanched, and she realized he hadn’t asked the question himself. “He probably forged it, made it look like the girl’s.”
“He didn’t have the intelligence to forge anything. He was slow. Is that not getting through to you? There’s no way in hell Tommy could’ve done any of this. He wasn’t mentally capable of plotting out a trip to the store, let alone a fake suicide. Are you being willfully blind? Or just covering for Lena like you always do?”
“Mind your tone,” Frank warned.
“This is going to catch her.” Sara held up the confession like a trophy. The shaking in her hands had gotten worse. She felt hot and cold at the same time. “Lena tricked him into writing this. All Tommy wanted to do was please people. She pushed him into a confession and then she pushed him into taking his own life.”
“Now, hold on—”
“She’s going to lose her badge for this. She should go to prison.”
“Sounds to me like you care a hell of a lot more about some punk kid than a cop who’s fighting for his life.”
He could have slapped her face and the shock would have been less. “You think I don’t care about a cop?”
Frank sighed heavily. “Listen, Sweetpea. Just calm down, okay?”
“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down. I’ve been calm for the last four years.” She took her cell phone out of her back pocket and scrolled through the contacts, looking for the right number.
Frank sounded scared. “What are you going to do?”
Sara listened to the phone ring at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s headquarters in Atlanta. A secretary answered. She told the woman, “This is Sara Linton calling for Amanda Wagner.”
CHAPTER FOUR
SARA SAT IN HER CAR IN THE HOSPITAL PARKING LOT, STARING out at Main Street. The facility had stopped accepting patients a year ago, but the building had looked abandoned long before that. Weeds sprouted in the ambulance bay. Windows on the upper floors were broken. The metal door that used to be propped open for smokers was bolted shut with a steel bar.
Guilt about Tommy Braham still weighed heavily on her—not just because she hadn’t remembered him, but because in the space of a few seconds, she had taken his death and used it as a launching pad for her own revenge fantasy against Lena Adams. Sara realized now that she should have just let it play out on its own instead of inserting herself into the middle. A suicide in police custody automatically triggered an investigation by the state. Frank would have followed the chain of command, calling in Nick Shelton, Grant County’s local field agent for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Nick would have talked to all the officers and witnesses involved. He was a good cop. In the end, he would have come to the same conclusion as Sara: that Lena had been negligent.
Unfortunately, Sara hadn’t been patient enough to trust the process. She had unilaterally decided to be town coroner again, elbowing poor Dan Brock out of the way, taking her own photographs of the scene, doing sketches of Tommy’s cell, before she allowed the body to be removed. She’d made copies of every sheet of paper she could find in the station house that referred to Tommy Braham. Even with all of this, calling Amanda Wagner, a deputy director with the GBI, was the worst of her transgressions. It was like swinging a sledgehammer at a thumbtack.
“Stupid,” she whispe
red, leaning her head into the steering wheel. She should be home right now looking at the marble tile her father had installed in the master bathroom, not waiting for someone straight from GBI headquarters to show up so she could unduly influence an investigation.
She leaned back against the seat, checking the clock on the dashboard. Special Agent Will Trent was almost an hour late, but she had no way of calling him. The trip from Atlanta was four hours—less if you knew you could flash your badge and talk your way out of a speeding ticket. She looked at the clock again, waiting out the flicker of 5:42 changing to 5:43.
Sara had no idea what she was going to say to him. She had talked to Will Trent probably a half dozen times while he worked a case involving one of Sara’s patients at Grady’s ER. She had shamelessly inserted herself into the investigation then, much as she was doing now. Will would probably start to wonder if she was some kind of crime scene voyeur. At the very least, he would question her obsession with Lena Adams. He would probably think that she was crazy.
“Oh, Jeffrey,” Sara whispered. What would he think of the mess she was getting herself into? What would he say about how awful being back in his adoptive town, the town he loved, made her feel? Everyone was so careful around her, so respectful. She should be grateful, but on some level, her skin crawled when she saw the pity in their eyes.
She was so damn tired of being tragic.
The roar of an engine announced Will Trent’s arrival. He was in a beautiful old Porsche, black on black. Even in the rain, the machine looked like an animal ready to pounce.
He took his time getting out of the car, snapping the faceplate off the radio, removing the GPS receiver from the dash, and locking them both in the glove compartment. He lived in Atlanta, where you bolted your front door even if you were just going out to get your mail. Sara knew he could leave the Porsche sitting in the parking lot with the doors wide open and the worst thing that might happen is someone would come along and close them for him.
Will smiled at her as he locked the door. Sara had only ever seen him in three-piece suits, so she was surprised to find him dressed in a black sweater and jeans. He was tall, at least six-three, with a lean runner’s body and an easy gait. His sandy blond hair had grown out, no longer the military cut he’d sported when they first met. Initially, Sara had taken Will Trent for an accountant or lawyer. Even now, she had a hard time reconciling the man with the job. He didn’t walk with a cop’s swagger. He didn’t have that world-weary stare that let you know he carried a gun on his hip. Still, he was an excellent investigator, and suspects underestimated him at their own peril.
This was one of the reasons that Sara was glad that Amanda Wagner had sent Will Trent. Lena would hate him on sight. He was too soft-spoken, too accommodating—at least on first blush. She wouldn’t know what she was getting herself into until it was too late.
Will opened the car door and got in.
Sara said, “I thought you’d gotten lost.”
He gave her a half-grin as he adjusted the seat so his head wasn’t hitting the roof. “I apologize. I actually did get lost.” He looked at her face, obviously trying to get a read off her. “How are you doing, Dr. Linton?”
“I’m …” Sara let out a long sigh. She didn’t know him very well, which, oddly, made it easier for her to be honest. “Not so great, Agent Trent.”
“Agent Mitchell said to tell you she’s sorry she couldn’t make it.”
Faith Mitchell was his partner, a onetime patient of Sara’s. She was currently on maternity leave, fairly close to her due date. “How is she holding up?”
“With her usual forbearance.” His smile indicated the opposite. “Excuse me for changing the subject so quickly, but how can I help you?”
“Did Amanda tell you anything?”
“She told me there was a suicide in custody and to get down here as fast as possible.”
“Did she tell you about …” Sara waited for him to fill in the blank. When he didn’t, she prompted, “My husband?”
“Is that relevant? I mean, to what’s going on today?”
Sara felt her throat tighten.
Will asked, “Dr. Linton?”
“I don’t know that it’s relevant,” she finally answered. “It’s just history. Everyone you meet in this town is going to know about it. They’re going to assume that you do, too.” She felt tears sting her eyes for the millionth time that day. “I’m sorry. I’ve been so angry for the last six hours that I haven’t really thought about what I’m dropping you in the middle of.”
He leaned up and pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket. “There’s no need to apologize. I get dropped in the middle of stuff all the time.”
Aside from Jeffrey and her father, Will Trent was the only man Sara knew who still carried a handkerchief. She took the neatly folded white cloth he handed her.
Will repeated, “Dr. Linton?”
She wiped her eyes, apologizing again. “I’m sorry. I’ve been tearing up like this all day.”
“It’s always hard to go back.” He said this with such certainty that Sara found herself really looking at him for the first time since he’d gotten into the car. Will Trent was an attractive man, but not in a way that you would quickly notice. If anything, he seemed eager to blend in with his surroundings, to keep his head down and do his job. Months ago, he’d told Sara that he’d grown up in the Atlanta Children’s Home. His mother had been killed when he was an infant. These were big revelations, yet Sara felt like she knew nothing about him at all.
His head turned toward her and she looked away.
Will said, “Let’s try it this way: You tell me what you think I should know. If I have more questions, I’ll try to ask them as respectfully as I can.”
Sara cleared her throat several times, trying to find her voice. She was thinking about her own recovery after Jeffrey’s death, the year of her life she had lost to sleep and pills and misery. None of that mattered right now. What she needed to convey to Will was that Lena Adams had a long-standing pattern of risking other people’s lives, of sometimes getting people killed.
She said, “Lena Adams was responsible for my husband’s death.”
Will’s expression did not change. “How so?”
“She got mixed up with someone …” Sara cleared her throat again. “The man who killed my husband was Lena’s lover. Boyfriend. Whatever. They were together for several years.”
“They were together when your husband died?”
“No.” Sara shrugged. “I don’t know. He had this hold on her. He beat her. It’s possible that he raped her, but—” Sara stopped, not knowing how to tell Will not to feel sorry for Lena. “She goaded him. I know this sounds horrible, but it was like Lena wanted to be abused.”
He nodded, but she wondered if he really understood.
“They had this sick relationship where they brought out the worst in each other. She put up with it until it stopped being fun, then she called in my husband to clean up her mess and …” Sara stopped, not wanting to sound as desperate as she felt. “Lena painted a target on his back. It was never proven, but her ex-lover is the man who killed my husband.”
Will said, “Police officers have a responsibility to report abuse.”
Sara felt a spark of anger, thinking he was blaming Jeffrey for not stepping in. “She denied it was happening. You know how hard domestic violence is to prove when—”
“I know,” he interrupted. “I’m sorry my words were unclear. I meant to say that the onus was on Detective Adams. Even when the officer is herself the victim of abuse, by law, it’s her duty to report it.”
Sara tried to even out her breathing. She was getting so worked up about this that she must have seemed slightly crazy. “Lena’s a bad cop. She’s sloppy. She’s negligent. She’s the reason my husband is dead. She’s the reason Tommy is dead. She’s probably the reason Brad got stabbed in the street. She gets people into situations, puts them in the line of fire, then backs away and watche
s the carnage.”
“On purpose?”
Sara’s throat was so dry she could barely swallow. “Does it matter?”
“I suppose not,” he admitted. “I’m guessing Detective Adams was never charged with anything in your husband’s murder?”
“She’s never held accountable for anything. She always manages to slither back under her rock.”
He nodded, staring ahead at the rain-soaked windshield. Sara had turned off the engine. She had been cold before Will came, but now their combined body heat was warm enough to cloud the windows.
Sara chanced another look at Will, trying to guess what he was thinking. His face remained impassive. He was probably the hardest person to read that Sara had ever met in her life.
She finally said, “This all sounds like a witch hunt on my part, doesn’t it?”
He took his time answering. “A suspect killed himself while in police custody. The GBI is charged with investigating that.”
He was being too generous. “Nick Shelton is the Grant County field agent. I leapfrogged over about ten heads.”
“Agent Shelton wouldn’t have been allowed to conduct the investigation. He’s got a relationship with the local force. They would’ve sent me or somebody like me to look into this. I’ve worked in small towns before. Nobody feels bad about hating the pencil pusher from Atlanta.” He smiled, adding, “Of course, if you hadn’t called Dr. Wagner directly, it might’ve taken another day to get somebody down here.”
“I’m so sorry that I dragged you away this close to a holiday. Your wife must be furious.”
“My …?” He seemed puzzled for a second, as if he’d forgotten about the ring on his finger. He covered for it badly, saying, “She doesn’t mind.”
“Still, I’m sorry.”
“I’ll live.” He turned her back to the matter at hand. “Tell me what happened today.”
This time the words came much more easily—Julie’s phone call, the rumors about Brad’s stabbing, Frank’s plea for her help. She finished with finding Tommy in the cell, seeing the words he had scrawled on the wall. “They arrested him for Allison Spooner’s murder.”