“Detective Adams?” Patterson said. “Could you please focus?”
“Can’t you just look back at your notes and write down what I told you the first time?”
“The first time you were interviewed or the first time you told the truth?”
Point taken.
Lena sat back in her chair. It was uncomfortable by design. The room was cold, painted cinder blocks with scuff marks around the vinyl baseboard. She stared at the mirror behind Patterson, wondering who was watching. Her last run-in with the rat squad had taken place in the conference room. Lena guessed with Lonnie Gray sitting in jail, the whole force was being treated differently.
There was a half-empty bottle of Coke on the table. Lena took a long sip before putting it back down. “Tell me why this happened.”
Patterson’s mouth turned down. He looked like the living embodiment of a frowny-faced emoticon.
Lena said, “No one will tell me why Jared and I were attacked. Was it because of the boy? Did they think I knew where he was?”
Predictably, Patterson wouldn’t yield. “It’s my job to ask the questions.”
“Is it really my job to answer them?” Lena asked. She was sick of not knowing. It was all she could think about. What had she done to bring this down on them? What stupid mistake had she made? What asshole had she pissed off?
She told Patterson, “My husband was almost killed. I was attacked in my home. Don’t you think I deserve to know why?”
“My colleague is investigating the attack. As you know, you and I are here on a different matter.” Patterson had the poker face of a banker denying a loan. “Your cooperation would go a long way toward—”
“Toward what?” she interrupted. “I wasn’t involved in any of this. I did what my commanding officer told me to do.”
“You lied under oath.”
“Did I?” Lena smiled. She’d been too careful for that. The first investigator hadn’t asked about the boy. As far as Lena knew, there was no law that said you had to volunteer information.
Patterson sat back in his chair, obviously trying to mimic her relaxed demeanor. “We’re both on the same side, Detective Adams.” He tried to sound reasonable, though they both knew he had skin in this game. He’d be looking at a big promotion if he could weed out a few more bad cops, and the man had made it clear from the beginning that he didn’t trust Lena. “We just want to make sure the case against Mr. Gray holds. It seems to me we share the same goal here.”
“Mr. Gray,” Lena echoed. No one was calling him Chief anymore. No one was laying claim to him at all. “My goal is to get back to my husband. He’s better, by the way. Thanks for your concern.”
Patterson tucked his chin into his chest. He did this whenever Lena pushed back, a physical manifestation of hitting a brick wall. He let out a short puff of air, then stacked together some papers on the table. “I’ll be just a minute.” He stood up. “Feel free to take a bathroom break if you need one.”
Lena gave him a salute as he left the room. He was obviously going to confer with whoever was behind the one-way mirror. She guessed it was Amanda Wagner. The deputy director would count arresting Lonnie Gray as a feather in her cap, though the truth was that Will Trent deserved the credit. He was the one who’d risked his life.
He was also the one who’d kept Lena from killing a man.
While Lena was no stranger to having blood on her hands, taking on the two rednecks who’d broken into her house had been different. If she thought about it too long, the bloodlust came back. She could feel it boiling up into the back of her throat. Her muscles tensed. Her hands clenched. Even standing in the ICU over Jared’s bed, Lena had struggled with the impulse to go one floor down and finish the job on the monster who’d wanted to kill her husband.
Not that he’d succeeded.
By some miracle, the doctor said that Jared was going to make a full recovery. He was looking at a few months of physical therapy, but his otherwise good health and youth had been on his side. Of course, now the same two things were working against him. Jared had been home less than thirty-six hours and he was already going stir-crazy—staying up too much, moving around too much, getting in her business too much.
She was tempted to send him to his mother’s. Lena didn’t hate the woman as much now, maybe because Darnell Long was the only reason Lena had a functioning kitchen. Fortunately, Jared’s mother seemed to understand that their truce was only as strong as the miles between them. She had already made one trip back to Alabama. If Lena was lucky, Nell wouldn’t return to Macon until the trial.
Not that Lena thought there would be a trial. Just this morning, Fred Zachary, the second shooter, had taken a deal in exchange for giving up the rednecks at Tipsie’s. The rednecks weren’t talking, but it was probably just a matter of time before they decided to play ball.
That left Tony Dell, and Mr. Snitch had made it clear he didn’t want a deal. He admitted to being on the street the night Jared was shot. He admitted to stabbing Eric and DeShawn to death. He corroborated everything DeShawn had told Will Trent about Big Whitey and Sid Waller. Basically, he’d thrown everybody under the bus, including himself. It wouldn’t be long before someone decided Dell should stop talking. Lena figured he was planning his own suicide. The fact was that Tony Dell had nothing to lose.
The Atlanta police had caught up with Dell and Cayla Martin outside the international terminal at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. Dell was obviously a psychopath, but he was also a survivor. He’d known the gig was up. He’d raised his hands and gotten out of the car.
Cayla Martin wouldn’t go so easy. She’d jumped behind the wheel and tried to outrun the police. Unfortunately, she’d run in the wrong direction. Lena wondered what was going through the nurse’s mind when she saw the shuttle bus speeding straight toward her. According to the accident report, there were about two seconds between the time Martin tried to turn the wheel and the head-on collision. Lena knew what it felt like when you thought you were about to die. Two seconds was an eternity. Martin wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Probably another second passed as she flew headfirst into the shuttle bus and snapped her neck on one of the seatbacks.
Lena couldn’t help but think that the sweetest part of that story was not Martin’s brutal death, but the fact that Sara Linton’s sixty-five-thousand-dollar BMW had been turned into the world’s most expensive Rubik’s Cube.
Laughter tickled Lena’s throat as she pushed herself up from the chair. She started pacing the room, forcing herself not to count off the steps because she already knew the space was twelve feet across by ten feet deep. She looked up at the camera. She smiled, though she felt the snarl in her teeth. She wanted to get through the pile of paperwork on her desk. She wanted to check on Jared. She wanted to go home and do the things that made her feel like a normal person: clean the house top to bottom, do the laundry, tend to her garden in the front yard. Winter was just around the corner. Lena should probably pull out the petunias, but she didn’t have it in her to let anything die just now.
She’d been to too many funerals lately.
DeShawn Franklin’s body had been unceremoniously cremated at a facility outside of Macon. Other than the mortician, Lena was the only person in attendance. His sister didn’t want her children there. His ex-wife wouldn’t speak his name and his current wife wouldn’t show her face in public. Jared hadn’t wanted Lena to go, but he didn’t try to stop her, either. She had made a lot of mistakes in her life. She figured DeShawn had tried to do right at the end. He’d turned on that recorder on his phone. Lena didn’t know everything that the recording had captured—nobody at the station did—but apparently, DeShawn had given Will Trent enough evidence to bring down Big Whitey’s organization. That detail alone earned DeShawn one pair of clear eyes watching him go to his maker.