A Grant County Collection (85 page)

She stared at her reflection in the mirror, realizing with a shock that she did not recognize herself. Her hair was pulled back so tightly that she was surprised she hadn't developed a stress fracture. Carefully, she reached up and loosened the band, wincing from the pain as roots were yanked out. Her starched white shirt showed water spots, but Sara did not care. She felt ridiculous in the suit, which was probably the most expensive outfit she'd ever owned. Buddy had insisted she have the black cloth sharply tailored to her body so that during the deposition, she looked like a rich doctor instead of a small-town plumber's daughter turned pediatrician. She could be herself in the courtroom, Buddy had told her. Sara could show Sharon Connor her real side when it would do the most damage.

Sara hated this duplicity, hated having to transform herself into a masculine-looking, arrogant bitch as part of her defense strategy. Her entire career, she had resisted quashing her femininity in order to fit into the boys' club of medicine. And now one lawsuit had turned her into everything she despised.

'You okay?'

Jeffrey stood in the doorway. He was wearing a charcoai-colored suit with a dark blue shirt and tie. His cell phone was clipped to one side of his belt, his paddle holster to the other.

'I thought you were at home.'

'I dropped off my car at the shop. You mind giving me a ride home?'

She nodded, resting her shoulder against the wall.

'Here.' He held up a daisy he had probably picked from the overgrown yard. 'Brought you this.'

Sara took the flower, which was little more than a weed, and put it on the edge of the sink. 'Wanna talk about it?'

She moved the daisy, lining it up perpendicular to the faucet. 'No.'

'Do you want to be alone?'

'Yes. No.' Quickly, she closed the distance between them, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, burying her face in his neck. 'It was so horrible,' she whispered. 'My God, it was just so awful.'

'It's going to be fine,' he soothed, rubbing her back with his hand. 'Don't let them get to you, Sara. Don't let them shake your confidence.'

She pressed into him, needing the reassurance of his body against hers. He'd been at work all day, and he smelled like the squad room – that odd mixture of gun oil, burned coffee, and sweat. With her family scattered, Jeffrey was the only constant in her life, the one person who was there to help pick up the pieces. If she thought about it, this had been true for the last sixteen years. Even when Sara had divorced him, even when she had spent most of her days trying to think of anything but Jeffrey, in the back of her mind, he was always there.

She brushed her lips against his neck, softly, slowly until his skin responded. She smoothed her hands down his back to his waist, pulled him closer in such a way that there was no mistaking her meaning.

He looked surprised, but when she kissed him on the mouth, he responded in equal measure. At the moment, Sara didn't so much want sex as the intimacy that came with it. It was, at least, the one thing she knew she was capable of doing right.

Jeffrey was the first to pull away. 'Let's go home, okay?' He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. 'I'll cook supper and we'll lay on the couch and ...'

She kissed him again, biting his lip, pressing closer. He had never needed much coaxing, but as his hand slid to the zipper on her skirt, Sara's mind wandered to thoughts of home: the pile of laundry that needed to be folded, the leaking faucet in the guest bathroom, the torn shelf liner in the kitchen.

Just the thought of taking off her panty hose was overwhelming.

He pulled away again, a half-smile on his lips. 'Come on,' he said, taking her by the hand and leading her out of the bathroom. 'I'll drive you home.'

They were halfway across the lobby when his cell phone started to ring. He offered a shrug to Sara, as if he needed her permission to answer the phone.

'Go ahead,' she relented, knowing whoever it was would just call back – or worse, come find him. 'Answer it.'

He still seemed reluctant, but took the phone off its clip anyway. She saw him frown as he looked at the caller ID, then answered, 'Tolliver.'

Sara leaned back against the front counter, hugging her arms to her waist as she tried to read his expression. She had been a cop's wife far too long to think that there was any such thing as a simple phone call.

'Where is she now?' Jeffrey demanded. He nodded, his shoulders tensing as he listened to the caller. 'All right,' he said, looking at his watch. 'I can be there in three hours.'

He ended the call, squeezing the phone so hard in his hand that Sara thought it might break. 'Lena,' he said brusquely, just as Sara was about to ask him what was going on. Lena Adams was a detective on his squad, a woman who made a habit of getting herself into bad situations and dragging Jeffrey along with her. Just the sound of her name brought a sense of dread.

Sara said, 'I thought she was on vacation.'

'There was an explosion,' Jeffrey answered. 'She's in the hospital.'

'Is she okay?'

'No,' he told her, shaking his head as if he could not believe what he had heard. 'She's been arrested.'

Lena kept one hand on the steering wheel as she scrolled through radio stations with the other. She cringed at the vacuous girls screeching from the speakers; when had stupidity become a marketable talent? She gave up when she hit the country music channels. There was a six-disc changer in the trunk, but she was sick of each and every song on each and every disc. Desperate, she reached into the floor of the backseat, groping for a loose CD. She fished out three empty jewel cases in a row, cursing more loudly with each one. She was about to give up when the tips of her fingers brushed a cassette tape underneath her seat.

Her Celica was around eight years old and still had a tape player, but Lena had no idea what this particular cassette contained, or how it had even ended up in her car. Still, she popped it into the dash and waited. No music came, and she turned up the knob, wondering if the tape was blank or had been damaged by last summer's scorching heat. She turned it up further and nearly had a heart attack when the opening drumbeats of Joan Jett's 'Bad Reputation' filled the car.

Sibyl. Her twin sister had made this tape two weeks before she had died. Lena could remember listening to this exact song nearly six years ago as she sped down the highway, heading back to Grant County from a drop-off she'd made at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's lab in Macon. The drive had been much like the one she was making today: a straight shot down a kudzu-lined interstate, the few cars on the road whizzing by eighteen-wheelers and mobile homes that were being transported to waiting families. Meanwhile, her sister was back in Grant County, being tortured and murdered by a sadist while Lena sang with Joan Jett at the top of her lungs.

She popped out the tape and turned off the radio.

Six years. It didn't seem like so much time had passed, but then again, it felt like an eternity. Lena was just now getting to the point where her dead twin was not the first thing she thought about when she woke up in the morning. It usually wasn't until later in the day when she saw something funny or heard a crazy story at work that she thought about Sibyl, made a mental note to tell her sister, then realized a split second later that Sibyl was no longer there to hear it.

Lena had always thought of Sibyl as her only family. Their mother had died thirteen days after giving birth. Their father, a cop, had been shot dead by a man he'd pulled over on a speeding violation. He'd never even known his young wife was pregnant. As there were no other relatives to speak of, Hank Norton, their mother's brother, had raised the two girls. Lena had never thought of her uncle as family. Hank had been a junkie during her childhood and a sober, self-righteous asshole during her teen years. Lena thought of him as more like a warden, somebody who made the rules and held all of the power. From the beginning, Lena had only wanted to break out.

She pushed in the cassette tape again, twisted the knob to lower the sound to a low, angry growl.

I don't give a damn about my bad reputation ...

The sisters had sung this as teenagers, their anthem against Reece, the backwater town they lived in until they were old enough to get the hell out. With their dark complexions and exotic looks that came courtesy of their Mexican-American grandmother, neither one of them had been particularly popular. Other kids were cruel, and Lena's strategy was to take them on one by one while Sibyl kept to her studies, working hard to get the scholarships she needed to continue her education. After high school, Lena had spun her wheels for a while then entered the police academy, where Jeffrey Tolliver plucked her from a group of recruits and offered her a job. Sibyl had already taken a professorship at the Grant Institute of Technology, which made the decision to accept the job that much easier.

Lena found herself thinking about her first weeks in Grant County. After Reece, Heartsdale had seemed like a major metropolis. Even Avondale and Madison, the other cities that comprised Grant, were impressive to her small-town eyes. Most of the kids Lena had gone to school with had never traveled outside the state of Georgia. Their parents worked twelve-hour days at the tire plant or drew unemployment so they could sit around and drink. Vacations were for the wealthy – people who could afford to miss a couple of days of work and still pay the electric bill.

Hank owned a bar on the outskirts of Reece, and once he had stopped injecting the profits into his veins, Sibyl and Lena had lived a fairly comfortable life compared to their neighbors. Sure, the roof on their house was bowed and a 1963 Chevy truck had been on blocks in the backyard for as long as she could remember, but they always had food on the table and each year when school came around, Hank drove the girls into Augusta and bought them new clothes.

Lena should have been grateful, but she was not.

Sibyl had been eight when Hank, on a drunken bender, had slammed his car into her. Lena had been using an old tennis ball to play catch with her sister. She overthrew, and when Sibyl ran into the driveway and leaned down to pick up the ball, the bumper of Hank's reversing car had caught her in the temple. There hadn't even been much blood – just a thin cut following the line of her skull – but the damage was done. Sibyl hadn't been able to see anything after that, and no matter how many Alcoholics Anonymous meetings Hank attended or how supportive he tried to be, in the back of her mind, Lena always saw his car hitting her sister, the surprised look on Sibyl's face as she crumpled to the ground.

Yet, here Lena was, using up one of her valuable vacation days to go check on the old bastard. Hank hadn't telephoned in two weeks, which was strange. Even though she seldom returned his calls, he still left messages every other day. The last time she had seen her uncle was three months ago, when he'd driven to Grant County – uninvited – to help her move. She was renting Jeffrey's house after he'd found out his previous tenants, a couple of girls from the college, were using the place as their own personal bordello. Hank had said maybe a handful of words to her as he moved boxes, and Lena had been just as chatty. As he was leaving, guilt had forced her to suggest dinner at the new rib place up the street, but he was climbing into his beat-up old Mercedes, making his excuses, before she got the words out of her mouth.

She should have known then something was wrong. Hank never passed up an opportunity to spend time with her, no matter how painful that time was. That he had driven straight back to Reece should have been a clue. She was a detective, for chrissakes. She should notice when things were out of the ordinary.

She also shouldn't have let two whole weeks pass without calling to check on him.

In the end, it was Charlotte, one of Hank's neighbors, who called to tell Lena that she needed to come down and see about her uncle.

'He's in a bad way,' the woman had said. When Lena tried to press her, Charlotte had mumbled something about one of her kids needing her and hung up the phone.

Lena felt her spine straighten as she drove into the Reece city limits. God, she hated this town. At least in Grant, she fit in. Here, however, she would always be the orphan, the troublemaker, Hank Norton's niece – no, not Sibyl, Lena, the bad one.

She passed three churches in rapid succession. There was a big billboard by the baseball field that read, 'Today's Forecast: Jesus Reigns!'

'Christ,' she murmured, taking a left onto Kanuga Road, her body on autopilot as she coasted through the back streets that led to Hank's house.

Classes weren't out for another hour, but there were enough cars leaving the high school to cause a traffic jam. Lena slowed, hearing the muffled strains of competing radio stations as souped-up muscle cars stripped their tires on the asphalt.

A guy in a blue Mustang, the old kind that drove like a truck and had a metal dashboard that could decapitate you if you hit the right tree, pulled up in the lane beside her. Lena turned her head and saw a teenage kid openly staring at her. Gold chains around his neck sparkled in the afternoon sun and his ginger-red hair was spiked with so much gel that he looked more like something you'd find at the bottom of the ocean than in a small Southern town. Oblivious to how stupid he looked, his head bobbed with the rap music pounding out of his car stereo and he gave her a suggestive wink. Lena looked away, thinking she'd like to see his spoiled white ass dropped off in the middle of downtown Atlanta on a Friday night. He'd be too busy pissing his pants to appreciate the gangsta life.

She turned off at the next street, taking the long way to Hank's, wanting to get away from the kids and traffic. Hank was probably fine. Lena knew one thing she shared with her uncle was a tendency toward moodiness. Hank was probably just in a dark place. He'd probably be angry to find her on his doorstep, invading his space. She wouldn't blame him.

A white Cadillac Escalade was parked in the driveway behind Hank's old Mercedes. Lena pulled her Celica close to the curb and turned off the ignition, wondering who was visiting. Hank might be hosting an AA meeting; in which case, she hoped the Escalade's driver was the last to leave instead of the first to show up. Her uncle was just as hooked on self-help bullshit as he had been addicted to speed and alcohol. She had known Hank to drive six hours straight to hear a particular speaker, attend a particular meeting, only to turn around and drive another six hours back so that he could open the bar for the early afternoon drunks.

She studied the house, thinking that the only thing that had changed about her childhood home was its state of decay. The roof was more bowed, the paint on the clapboard peeling so badly that a thin strip of white flecks made a chalk line around the house. Even the mailbox had seen better days. Someone had obviously taken a bat to the thing, but Hank, being his usual handy self, had duct-taped it back onto the rotting wood post.

Lena palmed her keys as she got out of the car. Her hamstrings were tight from the long drive, and she bent at the waist to stretch out her legs.

A gunshot cracked the air, and Lena bolted up, reaching for her gun, realizing that her Glock was in her glove compartment at the same time she processed that the gunshot was just the front door slamming shut.

The slammer was a stocky, bald man with arms the size of cannons and an attitude she could read from twenty paces. A large sheath containing a hunting knife was on his right hip and a thick metal chain dangled from his belt loop to his wallet in his back left pocket. He trotted down the rickety front stairs, counting a wad of money he held in his meaty hands.

He looked up, saw Lena, and gave a dismissive snort before climbing into the white Cadillac. The SUV's twenty-two-inch wheels kicked up dust as he backed out of the driveway and swung out into the street beside her Celica. The Escalade was about a yard longer than her car and at least two feet wider. The roof was so high she couldn't see over the top. The side windows were heavily tinted, but the front ones were rolled down, and she could clearly see the driver.

He'd stopped close enough to crowd her between the two cars, his beady eyes staring a hole into her. Time slowed, and she saw that he was older than she'd thought, that his shaved head was not a fashion statement but a complement to the large red swastika tattooed on his bare upper arm. Coarse black hair grew in a goatee and mustache around his mouth, but she could still see the sneer on his fat, wet lips.

Lena had been a cop long enough to know a con, and the driver had been a con long enough to know that she was a cop. Neither one of them was about to back down, but he won the standoff by shaking his head, as if to say, 'What a fucking waste.' His wife beater shirt showed rippling muscles as he shifted into gear and peeled off.

Lena was left standing in his wake.
Five, six, seven . . .
she counted the seconds, standing her ground in the middle of the road as she waited for the Cadillac to make the turn, taking her out of sight of the guy's rearview mirrors.

Once the car was gone, she went around to the passenger's side of the Celica and found the six-inch folding knife she kept under the seat. She slipped this into her back pocket, then got her Glock out of the glove compartment. She checked the safety on the gun and clipped the holster to her belt. Lena did not want to meet the man again, especially unarmed.

Walking toward the house, she wouldn't let her mind consider the reasons why such a person would be at her uncle's house. You didn't drive a car like that in a town like Reece by working at the tire factory. You sure as shit didn't leave somebody's house flashing a wad of money unless you knew that no one was going to try to take it off you.

Her hands were shaking as she walked toward the house. The doorjamb had splintered from being slammed so hard, or maybe from being kicked open. Pieces of rotting wood and rusting metal jutted into the air near the knob, and Lena used the toe of her shoe to push open the door.

'Hank?' she called, fighting the urge to draw her weapon. The man in the Escalade was gone, but his presence still lingered. Something bad had happened here. Maybe something bad was still going on.

Being a cop had given Lena a healthy respect for her instinct. You learned to listen to your gut when you were a rookie. It wasn't something that could be taught at the academy. Either you paid attention to the hairs sticking up on the back of your neck or you got shot in the chest on your first call by some whacked-out drug addict who thought the aliens were trying to get him.

Lena pulled the Glock, pointed it at the floor. 'Hank?'

No answer.

She stepped carefully through the house, unable to tell if the place had been tossed or if Hank just hadn't bothered to straighten up in a while. There was an unpleasant odor in the air, something chemical, like burned plastic, mixed with the usual reek of cigarettes from Hank's chain-smoking and chicken grease from the takeout he got every night. Newspapers were scattered on the living room couch. Lena leaned down, checked the dates. Most were over a month old.

Cautiously, she walked down the hallway, weapon still drawn. Lena and Sibyl's bedroom door stood open, the beds neatly made. Hank's room was another matter. The sheets were bunched up at the bottom like someone had suffered a fever dream and an unpleasant brown stain radiated from the center of the bare mattress. The bathroom was filthy. Mold blackened the grout, pieces of wet plaster hung from the ceiling.