Karin Slaughter - Broken

She made a grumbling noise as she took the carafe from the coffeemaker.

“Did you know Tommy Braham?”

“Yes.”

“What was he like?”

“Slow.”

“What about Allison Spooner?”

“Not slow.”

Will smiled. “I should thank you, Mrs. Simms, for those incident reports you sent to my partner last night. It shows an interesting pattern with Tommy. He’d had some trouble with his temper lately. Is that what you wanted me to know?”

She gave him a look over her glasses, but her mouth stayed closed as she walked to the back of the room. Will watched her push open the heavy steel door. She’d left him alone in the dark.

He went to the fax machine and checked under the table, giving Marla Simms the benefit of the doubt. There were no loose pages underneath, no 911 transcript that had fallen through the cracks. He opened the copier and saw the glass staring back at him. Something sticky was in the center. Will used his thumbnail to pry off the substance, which would transfer to every copy made on the machine. He held it up to the light. Glue, maybe? Gum?

He flicked it into the trashcan. None of the copies Sara had made for him yesterday showed a mark. Maybe someone else had used the machine after her and unwittingly transferred the gum onto the glass.

The office on the side of the squad room was empty, just as he’d thought. Will tried the knob. The door was unlocked. He went in and opened the blinds, giving him a nice view of the desks where the detectives sat. There were nail holes in the walls. In the slim ray of light coming through the outside window, he could see the shadows where photographs had once been. The desk was empty but for a telephone. All the drawers were cleaned out. The chair squeaked when he sat down.

If he was the betting type, Will would have put ten bucks on this being Jeffrey Tolliver’s old office.

He opened his briefcase and set out his files. Finally, the overhead lights flickered on. Will saw Marla through the glass in the wall. She stared at him, mouth open. With her tight bun and dirty glasses, she looked like one of those beady old ladies from a Gary Larson comic strip. Will plastered a smile on his face, tossed her a wave. Marla gripped the handle of the carafe so hard he could almost feel her desire to smash the glass into his face.

Will reached into his pocket and found his digital recorder. Every cop in the world kept a spiral notebook in which to record details of their investigations. Will did not have that luxury, but he’d learned to compensate.

He checked the window for Marla before putting the recorder to his ear and pressing play. The volume was low, and he heard Faith’s voice reading Tommy Braham’s confession. Will had not wasted the entire night worrying about his schoolgirl crush on Sara Linton. He’d prepared himself for the day by reading every single word in the reports and listening to Tommy Braham’s confession over and over again until he had memorized almost every word. He listened to the whole thing again in the office, the cadence of Faith’s voice so familiar that he could have spoken along with her.

Her tone was dispassionate, offering no inflection. “‘I was in Allison’s apartment. This was last night. I don’t know what time. Pippy, my dog, was sick. It was after I took her to the doctor. Allison said she would have sex with me. We started to have sex. She changed her mind. I got mad. I had a knife on me. I stabbed her once in the neck. I took the extra chain and lock and drove her to the lake. I wrote the note so people would think she had killed herself. Allison was sad. I thought that would be reason enough.’”

There were murmurs in the squad room. Will glanced up to find a couple of uniformed cops staring at him in disbelief. One of them started toward the office, probably to confront him, but his partner stopped him.

Will leaned back in the chair, hearing the squeak again. He took out his cell phone and called Faith. She picked up on the fourth ring. Her hello was more like a grunt.

“Did I wake you up?”

“It’s seven-thirty in the morning. Of course you woke me up.”

“I can call back.”

“Just gimme a minute.” He heard her moving around. She yawned so loudly that Will felt his own jaw twitching to open. “I pulled up some info on Lena Adams.”

“And?”

She yawned again. “Let me get to my laptop.”

Will couldn’t stop his own yawn. “I’m sorry I got you out of bed.”

“You’ve got me until four this afternoon. That’s when I meet my doctor at the hospital.”

Will started talking so she wouldn’t explain the procedure again. “That’s great, Faith. I guess your mom is driving you. She must be excited. What about your brother? Have you called him?”

“You can shut up now. I’m at my computer.” He heard keys being tapped. “Salena Marie Adams,” Faith said, probably reading from the woman’s personnel file. “Detective first grade. Thirty-five years old. Five-four and a hundred and twenty pounds.” Faith mumbled a curse. “God, that’s enough to make me hate her right there.”

“What about her history?”

“She was raped.”

Will was taken aback by her abruptness. He’d been expecting date of birth, maybe some commendations. Sara had said that she suspected Lena had been raped by her ex-boyfriend, but he’d been under the impression no formal charges had been filed. He asked Faith, “How do you know that?”

“The case came up when I cross-referenced her file. You really should Google more.”

“When did it happen?”

“Ten years ago.” He heard her fingers pecking the keyboard. “Her file is pretty clean. She’s worked some interesting cases. You remember that south Georgia pedophile ring awhile back? She and Tolliver broke it open.”

“Does she have any black marks?”

“Small-town forces don’t air their dirty laundry on paper,” Faith reminded him. “She took some time off the job six years ago. She worked security at the college less than a year, then went back on the job. That’s all I’ve got on her. Have you found anything else?”

“I had an interesting conversation with the man who runs the diner this morning.”

“What did he say?”

“Not a whole lot. Allison was a good kid. Hard worker. He didn’t know much about her personal life.”

“Do you think he killed her?”

“He’s sixty-something years old with a fake leg.”

“A real fake leg?”

Will thought about Lionel knocking on the prosthesis, the hollow sound. “I’ll see if I can confirm it, but he was putting on quite an act if the leg is real.”

“You never know with those small towns. Ed Gein was a babysitter.”

Faith was never one to miss an opportunity to compare a kindly old man to one of the twentieth century’s most notorious serial killers.

She said, “Spooner’s background check didn’t offer much, either. She’s got a bank account with eighteen dollars and change. She must be a cash-and-carry gal. The only checks she’s written in the last six months are to the college and the campus bookstore. The statements are delivered to the Taylor Drive address. Other than that, she’s got no credit cards. No utilities in her name. No credit history. No cell phone on record. No car.”

“The old guy at the diner says she drove a Dodge Daytona with Alabama plates.”

“It must be registered in someone else’s name. Do you think the locals know about it?”

“I don’t know. My source also says that Allison had a pink book bag she kept in the car when she was working.”

“Hold on a second.” Faith was obviously doing something on her computer. “All right, I’m not finding any BOLOs for the car coming out of Grant County or any towns in the vicinity.” If Frank Wallace knew about Allison’s car, he would have posted a “be on the lookout” to all neighboring counties.