Karin Slaughter - Broken

Will said, “I’ve already read your notes, Detective. Tell me the parts that aren’t on the pages.”

She started picking at the Band-Aid.

“Who did the death notifications?”

“I did.”

“On both Spooner and Braham?”

She nodded. “Elba, where Allison’s from, is a small town. The detective I talked to went to school with her. He says her mother died eight years ago. The father’s unknown. There’s an aunt, Sheila McGhee, but she’s not home much. She works for a crew that’s remodeling roach motels along the Panhandle. The detective’s going to try to track her down. I left a message on her answering machine, but she won’t hear it until she gets home or calls to check her messages.”

She was actually sounding like a detective now. Will asked, “No cell phone?”

“Not that I can find.”

“Was there an address book in Allison’s apartment?”

“We didn’t have time to do a search.” Her tone became clipped again. “A lot was going on yesterday. My partner was bleeding to death in the street.”

“I’d like to know when Ms. McGhee returns your call.”

She nodded.

“What about Tommy’s relations?”

“There’s just his dad, Gordon. I talked to him early this morning, told him what happened.”

“How did he take it?”

“No father wants to hear that his son’s confessed to murder.”

“How did he take the suicide?”

“About how you’d expect.” Lena looked down at her notes, though Will could tell she was buying time to collect herself. “Gordon’s driving up from Florida right now. I don’t know how long that’ll take. Seven, maybe eight hours.”

Will wondered where Frank Wallace was in all of this, and why the hardest parts of the case had fallen to Lena. He asked, “Did you know Allison Spooner?”

“Half the town did. She worked at the diner down the street.”

“Did you know her?”

“I never met her.”

“You don’t go to the diner?”

“Why does that matter?” She wasn’t looking for an answer. “Tommy laid it all out. You’ve got his confession right in front of you. He said that he wanted to have sex with her. She didn’t. So he killed her.”

“How long did it take for him to confess?”

“He dicked around for about an hour, then I got it out of him.”

“Did he offer an alibi? Initially, I mean.”

“He said he was at the vet. He’s got this dog, Pippy. She swallowed a sock or something. Tommy took her to the emergency vet over on Conford. The office staff can’t vouch for him being there the entire time.”

“Does he have a car?”

“A green Chevy Malibu. It’s at the shop. Tommy said the starter’s been acting up. He dropped the keys in the lockbox at Earnshaw’s yesterday morning.”

Will hadn’t been expecting that. “Earnshaw?”

“Sara’s uncle.”

“Is there security footage of the lot?”

“No, but I called the garage. The car is there.” She shrugged. “Tommy could’ve left it there after he killed Allison.”

“Have you searched the car?”

“I planned on doing that today.” Her tone indicated that Will was the major obstacle standing between her and doing her job.

Will didn’t back down. “How did Tommy know Allison?”

“She rented space from his dad—a converted garage apartment.” Lena looked at her watch.

“What was Tommy like?”

“Stupid,” she told him. “Slow in his thinking. I’m sure Sara’s already told you all about it.”

“According to Dr. Linton, Tommy’s IQ was around eighty. He wasn’t bright, but he held down a job at the bowling alley. He was a good kid. Good except for the trouble he’d been in lately.”

“I’d call murder a bit more than trouble.”

“I was referring to the incident reports.”

She hid her surprise well, but he could see the flicker of a question in her eyes.

“There are three reports detailing altercations over the last month. Mrs. Simms was kind enough to provide them.” She remained silent, so he asked, “You knew about them, right?”

Still, Lena didn’t respond. Will slid the incident reports across the desk so she could see them.

She skimmed the summaries. “Small problems. He obviously had a temper.”

“Who told you to arrest Tommy for Allison’s murder?”

“Frank—” She looked like she wanted to take back the word. “Frank and I discussed it. It was a joint decision.”

At least he knew what she looked like when she was lying. The bad news was that her lying face looked a lot like her honest one. “When did you first hear there was a body in the lake?”

“Brad called me around three yesterday morning. I woke everybody else up, started the investigation.”

“Have you talked to any of Allison’s teachers at school?”

“They’re all off for Thanksgiving break. I’ve got phone numbers for them, but I haven’t made any calls yet. Most of them are local. They’re not going anywhere. I was going to track them down this morning, but …” She held out her arms, indicating the space between them.

“What else were you going to track down?” He listed out her plans so far. “Talk to the teachers. Maybe talk to the office staff at the vet. Look at Tommy’s car. Try to track down Allison’s known associates. I guess you’d get that through the school, maybe Lionel Harris?”

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Were you planning on talking to Tommy again? Had he lived, I mean.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to get his confession on tape. He was a compelling witness against himself.”

“But everything else made sense to you—his motivations, stabbing her in the neck?”

“There were things I wanted to clear up. Obviously, I wanted to find the murder weapon. I assume it’s in his garage somewhere. Or his car. He must have taken Allison to the lake. There would have been trace evidence. Stop me if any of this reminds you of something you might have read in a textbook when you were in GBI school.”

“That’s a good word to use for it—‘textbook.’” He pointed out, “Seems like a lot of work for a case you considered closed. Isn’t that what you told me a few minutes ago, that it was closed?”

She stared at him again. Will knew she was waiting for him to ask about the 911 call.

He said, “You must be tired.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve had a pretty tough couple of days.” He indicated her field notes. “You got Brad’s call around three a.m. yesterday. Suspected suicide. You went to the lake. Found Spooner was dead, possibly murdered. Went to Spooner’s house and your boss got hurt, your partner got stabbed. You arrested Tommy. Got his confession. I’m sure you were at the hospital all night.”

“What’s your point?”

“Was Tommy a malicious person?”

She didn’t equivocate. “No.”

“Did he show any anger during your interrogation?”

She was silent again, gathering her thoughts. “I don’t think he planned to hurt Brad. But he did stab him. And he killed Allison, so …”

“So?”

She crossed her arms again. “Look, we’re just going in circles here. What happened to Tommy was bad, but he confessed to killing Allison Spooner. He stabbed my partner. Frank was hurt.”

Will carefully weighed her words. She obviously believed Tommy was guilty of killing Allison Spooner. She got sketchier when she talked about Brad Stephens being stabbed and Frank Wallace getting cut.

Lena checked her watch again. “Are we finished here?”

She was very good at this, but she couldn’t keep it up forever. “The lake is behind the station, right?”

“Right.”

“Between the college and Lover’s Point.”