Karin Slaughter - Faithless

Lena rapped her knuckles against the boards of the closet floor, checking for a secret compartment. Nothing sounded suspicious and all the boards were nailed firmly in place. Next, she went through the dresses lined up on the closet rod. Lena didn’t have a ruler, but she would have sworn each dress was equidistant, no one touching the other. There was a long winter jacket, obviously store-bought. The pockets were empty, the hem intact. Nothing was hidden in a torn seam or concealed in a secret pouch.

Lev was at the door, a laptop computer in his hands. “Anything?” he asked.

Lena had startled, but she tried not to show it. Jeffrey straightened with his hands in his pockets. “Nothing useful,” he replied.

Lev handed the computer to Jeffrey, the power cord trailing behind it. She wondered if he had looked at it himself while they were searching the room. She had no doubt Paul would have.

Lev told him, “You can keep this as long as you like. I’d be surprised if you found anything on it.”

“Like you said,” Jeffrey responded, wrapping the cord around the computer, “we need to eliminate every possibility.” He nodded to Lena, and she followed him out of the room. Walking down the hallway, she could hear the family talking, but by the time they reached the living room, everyone was silent.

Jeffrey told Esther, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She looked straight at Jeffrey, her pale green eyes piercing even to Lena. She didn’t say a word, but her plea was evident.

Lev opened the front door. “Thank you both,” he said. “I’ll be there Wednesday morning at nine.”

Paul seemed about to say something, but stopped at the last minute. Lena could almost see what was going through his little lawyer brain. It was probably killing him that Lev had volunteered for the polygraph. She imagined Paul would have an earful for his brother when the cops were gone.

Jeffrey told Lev, “We’ll have to call in someone to perform the test.”

“Of course,” Lev agreed. “But I feel the need to reiterate that I can volunteer only myself. Likewise, the people you see tomorrow will be there on a voluntary basis. I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, Chief Tolliver, but it’s going to be difficult enough getting them there. If you try to force them into taking a lie detector test, they’re likely to leave.”

“Thank you for the advice,” Jeffrey said, his tone disingenuous. “Would you mind sending your foreman as well?”

Paul seemed surprised by the request. “Cole?”

“He’s probably had contact with everyone on the farm,” Lev said. “That’s a good idea.”

“While we’re on it,” Paul said, glancing Jeffrey’s way, “the farm is private property. We don’t generally have the police there unless it’s official business.”

“You don’t consider this official business?”

“Family business,” he said, then held out his hand. “Thank you for all your help.”

“Could you tell me,” Jeffrey began, “did Abby drive?”

Paul dropped his hand, “Of course. She was certainly old enough.”

“Did she have a car?”

“She borrowed Mary’s,” he answered. “My sister stopped driving some time ago. Abby was using her car to deliver meals, run chores in town.”

“She did these things alone?”

“Generally,” Paul allowed, wary the way any lawyer is when he gives out information without getting something in return.

Lev added, “Abby loved helping people.”

Paul put his hand on his brother’s shoulder.

Lev said, “Thank you both.”

Lena and Jeffrey stood at the base of the steps, watching Lev walk into the house. He shut the door firmly behind him.

Lena let out a breath, turning back to the car. Jeffrey followed, keeping his thoughts to himself as they got in.

He didn’t speak until they were on the main road, passing Holy Grown again. Lena saw the place in a new light, and wondered what they were really up to over there.

Jeffrey said, “Odd family.”

“I’ll say.”

“It won’t do us any good to be blinded by our prejudices,” he said, giving her a sharp look.

“I think I have a right to my opinion.”

“You do,” he said, and she could feel his gaze settle onto the scars on the backs of her hands. “But how will you feel in a year’s time if this case isn’t solved because all we could focus on was their religion?”

“What if the fact that they’re Bible-thumpers is what breaks this open?”

“People kill for different reasons,” he reminded her. “Money, love, lust, vengeance. That’s what we need to focus on. Who has a motive? Who has the means?”

He had a point, but Lena knew firsthand that sometimes people did things just because they were fucking nuts. No matter what Jeffrey said, it was too coincidental that this girl had ended up buried in a box out in the middle of the woods and her family was a bunch of backwoods Bible-thumpers.

She asked, “You don’t think this is ritualistic?”

“I think the mother’s grief was real.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I got that, too.” She felt the need to point out, “That doesn’t mean the rest of the family isn’t into it. They’re running a fucking cult out here.”

“All religions are cults,” he said, and though Lena hated religion herself, she had to disagree.

“I wouldn’t call the Baptist church downtown a cult.”

“They’re like-minded people sharing the same values and religious beliefs. That’s a cult.”

“Well,” she said, still not agreeing but not knowing how to challenge him on it. She doubted the Pope in Rome would say he was running a cult. There was mainstream religion and then there were the freaks who handled snakes and thought electricity provided a conduit straight to the Devil.

“It keeps coming back to the cyanide,” he told her. “Where did it come from?”

“Esther said they don’t use pesticides.”

“There’s no way we’ll get a warrant to test that out. Even if Ed Pelham cooperated on the Catoogah side, we don’t have cause.”

“I wish we’d looked around more when we were over there.”

“That Cole person needs a harder look.”

“You think he’ll come Wednesday morning?”

“No telling,” he said, then asked, “What are you doing tonight?”

“Why?”

“Wanna go to the Pink Kitty?”

“The titty bar on Highway Sixteen?”

“The strip joint,” he corrected, as if she had offended him. Driving with one hand, he rooted around in his pocket and pulled out a book of matches. He tossed them to her and she recognized the Pink Kitty’s logo on the front. They had a huge neon sign outside the bar that could be seen for miles.

“Tell me,” he said, turning onto the highway, “why a naïve twenty-one-year-old would take a book of matches from a strip club and shove it up the ass of her favorite stuffed animal.”

That was why he had been so interested in the stuffed Snoopy on Abby’s bed. She had hidden the matchbook inside. “Good question,” she told him, opening the cover. None of the matches had been used.

“I’ll pick you up at ten thirty.”

When T essa opened the front door, Sara was lying on the couch with a wet rag over her face.

“Sissy?” Tessa called. “You home?”

“In here,” Sara managed around the cloth.

“Oh, Christ,” Tessa said. Sara felt her hovering near the end of the couch. “What did Jeffrey do now?”

“Why are you blaming Jeffrey?”

Tessa turned off the CD player mid-harmony. “You only listen to Dolly Parton when you’re upset with him.”

Sara slid the rag up to her forehead so she could see her sister. Tessa was reading the back of the CD case. “It’s a cover album.”