Karin Slaughter - Broken

The front door opened before Lena could reach it. Will Trent had obviously grown impatient waiting outside.

“Detective,” he said by way of greeting. He’d changed back into his dress shoes and shed Carl Phillips’s jacket. He looked as eager as she was reticent.

Lena handed him the paper. “Marla told me to give you this. She said you’d have to track down the audio from Eaton yourself.”

Will called to Marla at the desk. “Thank you, Mrs. Simms.” He took the paper from Lena’s hand. His eyes scanned back and forth. “You heard the call, right?” He looked up. “You made the transcript from the audio?”

“They dictated it to me from the screen. The audiotapes are stored off-site. They’re not hard to get.” Lena held her breath, praying that he would not ask her to track them down.

“Any idea who made the call?”

She shook her head. “It was a woman’s voice. The number was blocked and she wouldn’t leave her details.”

“Did you make this copy for me?”

“No. Marla handed it to me.”

He pointed at a black dot on the page. “You’ve got some gum on the glass in your copier.”

Lena wondered why the hell he was telling her this. Will Trent was like no cop she had ever seen. He had a habit of skirting around the real questions, making random comments or observations that seemed to lead nowhere until suddenly it was too late and she felt the noose tighten around her neck. He was playing chess and she was sucking at checkers.

Lena tried her own diversion. “We should get out to the crime scene if you want to be back in time for the autopsies.”

“Weren’t we just at the crime scene?”

“We don’t know for a fact what happened. Tommy could’ve lied. That happens in Atlanta, right? Bad guys lie to the cops?”

“More often than I’d like.” He slipped the transcript into his briefcase. “What time are the procedures supposed to start?”

“Frank said eleven-thirty.”

“This was when you talked to him last night?”

Lena tried to remember the answer she had given Will the first time he’d asked this question. She had talked to Frank twice. Both times he had drilled her on Tommy’s confession. Both times he had renewed his threat to tear down her life if she didn’t cover his drunk ass.

Lena cast out a nonanswer, hoping Will would bite. “It’s like I told you before.”

He held open the front door for her. “Any idea why the press isn’t all over this?”

“The press?” She would have laughed if she hadn’t been standing up to her knees in shit. “The paper’s closed for the holiday. Thomas Ross always goes skiing this time of year.”

Will laughed good-naturedly. “You gotta love small towns.” A cold wind made him have to put his shoulder into closing the glass door. He tucked his hands into his jeans pockets. The cuffs of his pants were still wet. “Let’s take your car.”

She felt uncomfortable having him in her Celica, so she nodded toward Frank’s Town Car. Lena pulled her key chain from her pocket. The county was on a tight budget and they both were supposed to share the car.

She pressed the button to unlock the doors.

Will didn’t get in. Instead, he scowled at the smell that wafted through the morning air. “Smoker?”

“Frank,” she said. The stink was worse than usual. He must have chain-smoked the whole trip to and from Macon last night.

Will asked, “This is Chief Wallace’s car?”

She nodded.

“Where’s Chief Wallace if this is his car?”

Lena managed to swallow the bile in her throat. “He took a cruiser to the hospital.”

Will didn’t comment, though she wondered if he’d made a mark in his book. Frank had taken the cruiser so he wouldn’t get stopped along the way. Speeding during a nonemergency situation was illegal, but it was the sort of illegal cops danced around all the time.

Will asked, “Can you drive a stick?”

It was her turn to scowl. Of course she could drive a stick.

Will said, “Let’s take my car.”

“Are you kidding me?” Lena had heard about the Porsche before she’d made it to the station this morning. The whole town was talking about it—what it must’ve cost, why a state investigator would be driving it, and, more important, that it was parked in front of the Linton house all night.

Will didn’t wait to see if she followed as he walked toward the opposite end of the lot. He talked as he made his way to the car, his leather briefcase swinging gently at his side. “I’m curious about Allison Spooner. You said she’s from Alabama?”

“Yes.”

“And she’s a student at Grant Tech?”

Lena was careful with her answer. “She’s registered at the school.”

Will turned to her. “So, that means she’s a student?”

“It means she’s registered. We haven’t talked to her teachers yet. We don’t know if she was actively attending classes. We get a lot of calls from parents this time of year wondering why they’re not getting report cards.”

He asked her again, “Do you think Allison Spooner dropped out?”

She tried a new strategy. “I think that I’m not going to tell you something unless I know it’s the absolute truth.”

He gave one of his quick nods. “Fair enough.”

Lena waited for another question, another insinuation. Will just kept walking, his mouth closed. If he thought this new technique was going to break her, he was dead wrong. Lena had been dealing with silent disapproval her entire life. She had made an art out of ignoring it.

She tucked her head down against the cold. Her mind kept going back to her earlier conversation with Will. She had been so furious about him being in Jeffrey’s office that she hadn’t really paid attention to what he was saying at first. But then he had pulled out Allison’s wallet and she had seen that the third photograph was missing.

The picture showed Allison sitting beside a boy who had his arm around her waist. An older woman sat on her left, some distance between them. They were all on a bench outside the student center. Lena had stared at the photo long enough to remember the details. The boy was around Allison’s age. He had been wearing the hood of his sweatshirt pulled down low on his head but she could tell he had brown hair and eyes. A smattering of a goatee was on his weak chin. He was chubby the way most of the guys at Grant Tech tended to be, from too many days spent in classrooms and nights wasted in front of video games.

The woman in the photograph was obviously from the poor part of town. She was in her forties, maybe older. Past a certain age, it was difficult to tell with hard-looking women. The good news was that they stopped aging. The bad news was that they already looked ninety. Every line on her face said she was a smoker. Her bleached-blonde hair was so dry it looked more like straw.

Also missing from evidence was Tommy’s cell phone. Frank had handed it to Lena in the street. He’d found it in Tommy’s back pocket when he frisked him before putting him into the back of the squad car. She had sealed the phone in a plastic bag, written out the details, and logged it into evidence.

And at some point last night, both the photo from Allison’s wallet and Tommy’s phone had gone missing.

There was only one person who could’ve hidden the evidence, and that was Frank. Marla said he’d gone through her files. He had probably doctored the 911 transcript, too. But why? Both the picture and the call brought up the possibility of Allison having a boyfriend. Maybe Frank was trying to track down the kid before Will Trent found him. Frank had told Lena that they both should stick to the truth, or at least a close version of it. Why was he going behind her back and looking for another suspect?