A Grant County Collection (36 page)

'The truth,' Jeffrey said, feeling his calm return. What he saw before him was no longer his mentor, his surrogate father, but a criminal, a lying old man who had destroyed the people he was meant to protect.

'Come on, now,' Hoss said, begging. 'You can't do this. You'll ruin me. You know what'll happen if you go out there and . . . please, Slick. Don't do this.' He took a step forward as if to stop Jeffrey. 'You might as well put a gun to my head.' He tried a weak smile. 'Come on, son. Don't look at me that way.'

'Look at you?' Jeffrey asked, putting his hand on the doorknob. 'I can't even stand to see your face.'

He did not slam the door behind him, but in his mind, Jeffrey heard a resounding crash. Sara stood up, wringing her hands.

He did not know what to tell her. There would never be the right words to describe how he felt. Rudderless, that was a good one to start with. He had lost the thing that gave him direction.

'Are you okay?' she asked, and the concern in her voice was better than anything she had ever done for him.

'He came to see me after Dad was arrested,' Jeffrey told her.

'Hoss?'

'I was at Auburn, just about to graduate. I remember everything about it,' he paused, picturing the multicolored leaves on the trees that beautiful fall day. Jeffrey was sitting in his dorm room, trying to figure out how he would pay for his doctorate if Auburn accepted him into the program. He wanted to be a teacher, something respectable with a steady paycheck. He wanted to give something back.

'He knocked on the door,' Jeffrey continued. 'Nobody knocked. They usually just came in. I thought somebody was playing a joke.' He leaned against the wall. 'He kept knocking, and I finally opened the door and there he was with this look on his face. Told me Dad had taken a plea. Turned on his friends so he wouldn't get the death penalty. You know what he said?'

Sara shook her head.

'"Some kind of coward,"' Jeffrey finished. 'He told me I had to be a man now, that playtime was over. Playtime, like that's all I had been doing in college, just having fun. He handed me this application. It was already filled out.'

'The police academy?'

'Yeah,' he nodded. 'I just took it and signed it and that was it.' For the first time in his life, Jeffrey found himself wondering what would have become of his life if he had told Hoss no. He would not have met Sara, for one. He would probably still be living here in Sylacauga, dealing with the same snide remarks and secretive looks that had chased Robert away.

He said, 'I don't know how I'm going to do this.'

'I'll be here as long as you need me.'

'I can't even think about it,' he told her, and that was the truth. How could he do this? How could he repeat what Hoss had told him?

'It'll be fine,' she said, just as a gun exploded in Hoss's office.

Sara must have opened the door. Jeffrey did not feel like he could move. Yet, somehow, he managed to turn around. Somehow, he was facing Hoss's office.

The old man sat in his chair, one hand on the flag from his brother's coffin, the other holding his revolver. He had put the muzzle of the gun flat to his head and pulled the trigger. There was no question in Jeffrey's mind that Hoss was dead, but still, when Sara went around the desk and pressed her fingers to his neck, he managed to form the question with his eyes.

'I'm sorry,' she told him. 'He's dead.'

3:50
P.M.

Shit,' Lena hissed, trying not to jerk her hand back as Molly stuck a needle into the cut.

'I'm sorry,' Molly apologized, but she was looking over her shoulder at Sara and Jeffrey, not Lena.

Lena watched as Jeffrey was loaded into the ambulance. 'Will he be okay?'

Molly nodded, though she said, 'I hope so.'

'What about Marla?'

'They've got her in surgery. She's old, but she's strong.' She looked back at Lena's hand. 'This is going to sting.'

'No shit,' Lena answered. The knife slicing open her skin had not hurt as much as the freaking needle.

'It'll block the pain so I can suture you.'

'Just hurry,' Lena said, biting her lip. She tasted blood and remembered her split lip. Molly jabbed in the needle again. 'Christ, that hurts.'

'Just a little more.'

'Christ,' she repeated, looking away from the needle. She saw Wagner talking to Nick, both of them staring at Lena and Molly as they sat in the back room of the cleaners.

'There,' Molly said. 'It should start numbing up in a few minutes.'

'It'd better,' Lena told her, feeling phantom pains from the needle. She looked through the front windows again, seeing the mess in the street. There were at least fifty GBI agents swarming around, none of them knowing what the hell they were doing. Smith was dead and Sonny was locked in the back of a squad car on his way to Macon, where he would probably have the shit beaten out of him. There was a special place in hell for cop-killers.

Lena watched Molly open the suture kit she had taken from the ambulance. 'Where are the kids?'

'Back with their parents,' Molly said, laying out the kit. 'I can't imagine what it was like for them. The parents, I mean. My God, when I think about it, my blood runs cold.'

Lena realized she had been clenching every muscle in her body, and she relaxed as her hand started to numb.

'Better?' Molly asked.

'Yeah,' Lena allowed. 'Thanks for doing this here. I hate going to the hospital.'

'That's understandable,' Molly said, using a syringe to wash out the gash. 'You only need three or four sutures. Sara's a lot better at this than I am.'

'She's tougher than I thought.'

'I think we all are,' Molly pointed out. 'You had me fooled when we went into the station.'

'Yeah,' Lena said, though the compliment rang false. She had been terrified.

Molly used a pair of long tweezers to pick up a curved needle. She dug it into Lena's skin, and Lena watched, thinking how odd it was to see her flesh being pierced and feel nothing but a dull tugging as the thread went through.

'How long have you been dating Nick?'

'Not long,' Molly said, tying off the thread. 'He kept asking Sara out. I guess I was the door prize.'

Lena laughed as she tried to imagine Nick and Sara together. 'Sara's about ten feet taller than he is.'

'She's also in love with Jeffrey,' Molly reminded her, as if that was not obvious. 'Oh, God, I remember the first time I saw them together.' She tied the suture. Lena felt the same dull tug as she punctured the skin again. 'I've never seen her so giddy.'

'Giddy?' Lena echoed, thinking she had heard wrong. Sara was one of the most serious people she had ever met.

'Giddy,' Molly confirmed. 'Like a schoolgirl.' She tied off the second thread, making a neat knot. 'One more, I think.'

'I've never thought about him that way.'

'Jeffrey?' Molly asked, as if it surprised her. 'He's gorgeous.'

'I guess,' Lena shrugged. That'd be kind of like dating your father, though.'

'Maybe for you,' Molly said in a suggestive tone. She dug into the skin one more time and tied off the third suture. 'There you go,' she said, cutting the thread just above the knot. 'All set.'

'Thank you.'

'The scar shouldn't be bad.'

'I'm not worried about that,' Lena said, flexing her hand. The fingers moved, but she could not feel them.

'Take some Tylenol when it starts to hurt. I can have Sara call in something for you if you like.'

'That's okay,' Lena said. 'She's got more important things to worry about.'

'She wouldn't mind,' Molly offered.

'No,' Lena assured her. 'Thanks.'

'All right,' Molly said, wrapping the suturing kit. She gave a groan as she stood. 'Now, I think I am going home to a large glass of wine and my children.'

'That sounds nice,' Lena said.

'My mother has kept them away from the news. I don't know how I'm going to tell them about this.'

'You'll think of something,' Lena told her.

Molly smiled. 'Take care.'

'Thanks,' Lena answered, sliding off the table.

Nick passed her as she walked toward the front of the cleaners. He said, 'We'll need to debrief you tomorrow.'

'You know how to find me.'

Wagner was leaning against the front counter, her cell phone plastered to her ear. When she saw Lena, she said, 'Wait a minute,' into the phone, then told Lena, 'Good work, Detective.'

'Thanks,' Lena said.

'You ever want to run with the big dogs,' Wagner offered, 'give me a call.'

Lena looked out into the street, watching the local agents strutting around like they had saved the day. She thought about Jeffrey, and how he had given her a second chance. Being honest, it was more like a fifth or sixth chance.

She gave Wagner a smile. 'No thanks. I think I'll stay where I am.'

Wagner shrugged, like it was no skin off her back. She went back to her call, saying, 'We'll obviously need to interrogate him tonight. I don't want him talking to the other inmates and figuring out he needs a lawyer.'

Lena pushed open the door with her good hand, nodding to some of the men in the street. She belonged here. She was a part of them. She was Frank's partner again. She was a cop. Hell, maybe she was more than that.

She walked toward the college. Now that the standoff was over, the rent-a-cop from campus security was standing sentry at his car. He tipped his hat to her as she walked by, and Lena, feeling generous, nodded back.

There was a welcome breeze in the air as she walked up the main drive to the student dorms. Lena touched her fingers to her belly. She wondered what was in there, what kind of parent she could be. After today, she was beginning to think that not everything was impossible.

The campus was pretty empty, most of the kids probably glued to their televisions or sacked out on their beds, thankful for a day without classes. Downtown was still blocked off, but Lena figured in a few hours they would start to file out, rubbernecking, trying to absorb some of the drama that had unfolded today. They would call their parents and cry about how horrible it was. The dean would be handling more calls from angry parents, like this kind of thing could be controlled by anybody.

Ethan's dorm this year was quieter than the one he had lived in when Lena had first met him. All-night parties and weekend binges were not exactly his style, and he had managed to befriend the professor in charge of assigning dorm space and gotten placed in a quieter hall.

She climbed the three steps up to the concrete porch, passing a few students as they left the dorm. Ethan's room had been a closet at some point, and even though the university had no qualms about stacking students in dorms like sides of beef, they had not had the gall to make him share. He had measured the space once while Lena watched, surprised that at eight feet by eleven it was bigger than they both had thought.

She knocked on the door before opening it. Ethan was sitting in bed with a book on his lap. The little television on the bookcase showed the news, the sound turned off.

He asked, 'What are you doing here?'

'You wanted me to come by after work.'

'Wanted,' he said. 'Past tense. Not anymore.'

Lena leaned against the door. 'Do you know what kind of day I've had?'

'Do you know what kind of day
I've
had?' he shot back, slamming the book closed.

'Ethan –'

"I'll take care of it,"' he interrupted. 'That's what you said. "I'll take care of it."'

'I didn't mean –'

'Are you pregnant?'

She stared at him, feeling an ache in the pit of her stomach. For the first time since she had met him, Lena did not want to be alone, even if it meant being here on Ethan's terms.

'Are you going to answer me?'

She finally said, 'No.'

'You're lying.'

'I'm not,' she insisted, making things up as she went along. 'I started my period after we talked. It must have been the stress.'

'You said you were going to take care of it if you were.'

'But I'm not.'

He got off the bed and walked toward her. She felt herself relax until she saw his clenched fist coming up and slamming into her stomach. Lena doubled over from the pain, and he put his hand on her back, keeping her down, whispering, 'If you ever "take care of" anything that's mine, I'll kill you.'

'Oh,' she cried, trying to breathe.

'Get out of here,' he said, shoving her back into the hall. He slammed the door so hard that the bulletin board he kept outside crashed to the ground.

Lena reached out for the wall, trying to straighten herself. Pain shot through her gut, and she felt tears well into her eyes.

Two students were at the front of the hall by the doorway, and she walked past them, trying to keep her spine as straight as possible. She maintained her composure until she was behind the dorm, hidden in the woods where no one could see her.

She leaned against a tree, letting herself sink to the ground. The dirt was wet underneath her, but she did not care.

Her cell phone chirped as it powered up. She waited for the signal, then dialed in a number. Tears streamed down her face as she listened to the ringing on the other end.

'Hello?'

Lena opened her mouth to speak, but she could only cry.

'Hello?' Hank said, then because probably no one else called her uncle in the middle of the afternoon balling like a child, he said, 'Lee? Honey, is that you?'

Lena choked back a sob. 'Hank,' she finally managed. 'I need you.'

Sara sat on the hood of her car, looking out at the cemetery. Nothing had changed about Deacon White's funeral home in the last decade, despite the fact that a large conglomerate had bought them out. Even the rolling green hills looked the same, the white gravestones sticking up like broken teeth.

Still, Sara thought if she never saw another grave again it would be too soon. She had attended funerals all week, mourning the men and women who had been victimized by Sonny and Eric Kendall's rampage. Marilyn Edwards had somehow survived being shot in the bathroom of the station, and it looked like she would pull through. She was strong, but she was a minority. Most of the other victims had died.

'The town looks different,' Jeffrey said, and maybe to him it did. He was such a different person from the man who had brought her here the last time.

'You sure you don't want to call Possum and Nell?'

He shook his head. 'I don't think I'm ready for that.' He paused, probably thinking about his son, wondering yet again what he could do about Jared. 'I wonder if Robert knew.'

'I figured it out,' she reminded him.

'Robert wasn't sleeping with me,' he pointed out. 'Man, I wonder what he's up to.'

'You could try to find out.'

'If he wanted me to know where he is, he'd tell me,' Jeffrey said. 'I hope wherever he ended up, he's found some peace.'

Sara tried to comfort him. 'You did everything you could.'

'I wonder if he ever talks to Jessie?'

'She's probably been out of prison a while now,' Sara said. Much as she had predicted, Jessie had served only a handful of years in jail for killing a defenseless man. Her addiction to drugs and alcohol had been a mitigating factor, but Nell's opinion had been that Robert's sexuality was the evidence that most swayed the jury. Sara hoped that things would be different if the same crime happened today, but you could never tell with small towns.

'She's back at Herd's Gap,' he provided. 'I got a Christmas card from her the year she got out.'

'Why didn't you tell me?'

'We weren't exactly speaking then,' he explained, and she guessed this had happened sometime around their divorce.

He said, 'Lane Kendall died three days before they came after me.'

'How did you find out?' Sara asked. Sonny Kendall had refused to talk about anything to do with his family.

'The sheriff told me.'

'Since when did Reggie Ray start volunteering information to you?'

He turned around, giving her a half-smile. 'You didn't hear about his oldest son, Rick?'

'What?'

'He's the drama teacher over at Comer High School.'

Sara laughed so hard that she had to put her hand over her mouth. Even if Rick had a wife and twelve kids, Reggie would embrace the stereotype the same as if his son was a cross-dressing hairdresser.

'Just goes to show . . .' Jeffrey said, giving a half-shrug that she could tell hurt his shoulder. He was not used to wearing a sling and she practically had to force him into it every morning.

He said, 'I wonder what happened to the letters Eric said he sent me?'

'Maybe she didn't mail them,' Sara suggested.

'Sounds like something she'd do.'

'Sonny won't even talk about that?'

'No,' Jeffrey said. 'The military wants him when the courts are through. He was AWOL since Lane died. They probably would have overlooked it if he hadn't . . .'

Sara stared at the cemetery. 'I forgot all about them,' she confessed. 'As upset as I was when we left town, I haven't given them a thought in all these years.'

'Maybe I should have told Lane the truth,' he said. 'God, she hated me.'

'She wouldn't have believed you,' Sara pointed out, the same conclusion they had come to all those years ago.

Lane Kendall's life was fueled by hatred and mistrust. Nothing Jeffrey said would have changed that. Still, at the time, Sara had not completely agreed that Hoss should be allowed to take his secrets to his grave. Jeffrey's arguments had been persuasive. Sitting down with Reggie Ray and talking through Hoss's confession would have been like rolling a boulder up the mountain. Absent any hard evidence, no one would take Jeffrey at his word, especially since Robert was not there to back him up.

Sara had always believed that the real reason Jeffrey kept silent was because he could not bring himself to speak against Hoss when the other man was not around to defend himself. In the end, it was easier for him to continue to take the blame than to stir up more trouble with the truth. Jeffrey did not live in Sylacauga anymore, and there was no need to fight that battle. The people who mattered to him knew what had really happened, and the people who didn't went about living their lives much the same as before. Reggie Ray's report said that the sheriff had been cleaning his gun when it went off, and no one had questioned him. Julia Kendall's murder was still listed as unsolved.

Jeffrey tugged at the sling. 'Damn, I hate this thing.'

'You need to wear it,' she said, making her voice stern.

'It doesn't hurt.'

She brushed her fingers along the nape of his neck. 'I need you to be able to use that arm.'

'That right?' he said, giving her a shadow of his usual sly smile.

She wanted him okay so much that she tried to keep up the teasing. 'That hand.'

'You like that hand?'

'I like them both,' she said.

'Do you remember,' he began, 'the first time you told me you loved me?'

'Umm . . .' She pretended to think, but she knew.

'When we got back to Grant after being here,' he said. 'Remember?'

'I was unpacking all my beach stuff,' she said, 'and I looked around and you weren't there.'

'Right.'

'And when you came back I asked you what you were doing, and you said –'

'Your trash smelled like something died in it.'

'And I told you I loved you.'

'I guess you hadn't had that many men take out the trash before.'

'No,' she admitted. 'And you're the only one I've wanted to take out my trash ever since.' He gave her a real smile, and she felt her heart lift. 'I want to love you so much.'

His smile faltered. 'What's stopping you?'

'No,' she told him, trying to clarify herself. 'I've been fighting it for so long. From the moment I met you, I didn't want to be in love with you. I didn't want to feel so desperate for you.'

'What's changed?'

Her answer was simple. 'You.'

'You haven't,' he told her. 'Changed, I mean.'

'Is that so?' she asked, wondering how he managed to make it sound like a compliment.

'You didn't need to,' he said. 'You were perfect already.'

She laughed out loud. 'Tell that to my mother.'

He waited for her to stop laughing. 'Thank you.'

'For what?'

'Waiting for me to grow up.'

She put her fingers to his cheek. 'Patience has always been my strong suit.'

'No kidding.'

'You were worth the wait.'

'Tell me that in another ten years.'

'I will,' she promised him. 'I will.'

He looked down at his injured arm, and she tried to stop him, thinking he was going to take off the sling. What he did instead was take her hand and look at his Auburn class ring on her finger. When all hell had broken loose at the station, she had taken the ring, knowing it would help identify Jeffrey to the shooters. At the hospital, while Jeffrey was in surgery, she had nearly worn a blister on her finger, rubbing the blue stone in the ring like a talisman, as if she could somehow make everything okay.

She asked, 'Do you want it back?'

He kept his expression neutral. 'Do you want to give it back?'

Sara looked at the ring, and thought about everything that had brought them to this place. As silly as it was, she knew what her wearing the ring would mean to Jeffrey, and to everyone else in Grant County.

She said, 'I'll never take it off.'

He smiled, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, Sara felt like things might eventually be okay.

Jeffrey must have felt this, too, because he tried to tease, 'Maybe you should take it off if you're working in the yard.'

'Hm,' she answered. 'Good point.'

He rubbed her finger with his thumb. 'Or helping out your dad.'

'I could wrap some masking tape around the band so it fits better.'

He smiled, tugging the ring, pointing out that it was hardly in danger of falling off. 'You know what they say about big hands . . .' he began. When she did not answer, he finished, 'Big feet.'

'Ha-ha,' she said, cupping his face in her hand. Before she knew what was happening, Sara had her arms around his neck, holding on to him as if her life depended on it. Whenever she let herself think about how close she had come to losing him, Sara felt a sort of desperation that made her chest ache.

'It's okay,' he told her, though he seemed to be saying this more to himself. She could tell he was thinking about the thing that had brought them here in the first place.

She forced herself to let go of him, asking, 'Are you ready?'

He glanced back at the cemetery, squaring his shoulders as best as he could.

Sara slid off the hood of the car, but he told her, 'No, I need to do this alone.'

'You sure?'

He nodded again, heading off toward the cemetery.

Sara got into the car, leaving the door open so she would not suffocate in the heat. She looked at the ring, turning her hand so she could see the football on the side. Like all class rings, it was huge and hideous, yet right now she thought it was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

She looked up, watching Jeffrey make his way up the hill. He picked at the sling around his neck before taking it off and shoving it into his pocket.

'Jeffrey,' she admonished, though of course he could not hear her. He did not hate the sling so much as the appearance of infirmity.

He stopped at the corner of the cemetery where a small marble marker stood. She knew Jeffrey well enough to know he was thinking about Sylacauga marble and underground streams, cotton mills and sinkholes. She also knew that the thing he took from his pocket was a small gold locket.

As she watched, Jeffrey used his bad hand to open the heart, taking one last look at the picture of Eric inside before leaving the keepsake on top of Julia's gravestone and walking back down the hill to Sara.