Karin Slaughter - Faithless

He wondered if she was still mad at him for sleeping on the couch. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong- really. I just need to think some more before I can talk about it,” she said. “Listen, I’ve got a patient waiting.”

“All right.”

“I love you.”

Jeffrey felt his smile come back. “I’ll see you later.”

He slid the phone back on the hook, staring at the blinking lights. Somehow, he felt like he had gotten his second wind, and he thought now was as good a time as any to talk to Cole Connolly.

He found Lena in the hallway outside the bathroom. She was leaning against the wall, drinking a Coke, and she startled when he walked up, spilling soda down the front of her shirt.

“Shit,” she muttered, brushing the liquid from her blouse.

“Sorry,” he told her. “What’s going on?”

“I needed to get some air,” she said, and Jeffrey nodded. The Holy Grown workers had obviously spent the early hours of the morning toiling in the fields and had the body odor to prove it.

“Any progress?”

“Basically, all we’ve got is more of the same. She was a nice girl, praise the Lord. She did her best, Jesus loves you.”

Jeffrey didn’t acknowledge her sarcasm, though he wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment. He was beginning to see that Lena ’s calling them a cult hadn’t been that far off. They certainly acted as if they were brainwashed.

Lena sighed. “You know, actually, looking past all their bullshit, she seemed like a really nice girl.” She pressed her lips together, and he was surprised to see this side of her. As quickly as it had appeared, it passed, though, and Lena said, “Oh, well. She must have had something to hide. Everybody does.”

He caught a glint of guilt in her eye, but instead of asking about Terri Stanley and the police picnic, he told her, “Rebecca Bennett’s missing.”

Shock registered on her face. “Since when?”

“Last night.” Jeffrey handed her the note Esther had pressed into his hand outside the diner. “She left this.”

Lena read it, saying, “Something’s not right,” and he was glad that someone was taking this seriously. She asked, “Why would she run away this close to her sister dying? Even I wasn’t that selfish when I was fourteen. Her mother must be going nuts.”

“Her mother’s the one who told me,” Jeffrey said. “She called me at Sara’s this morning. Her brothers didn’t want her to report it.”

“Why?” Lena asked, handing back the note. “What harm could it do?”

“They don’t like the police involved.”

“Yeah,” Lena said. “Well, we’ll see how they don’t like the police involved when she doesn’t come back.” She asked, “Do you think she’s been taken?”

“Abby didn’t leave a note.”

“No,” she said, then, “I don’t like this. I don’t feel good about it.”

“I don’t either,” he agreed, tucking the note back into his pocket. “I want you to take the lead with Connolly. I don’t think he’ll like his questions coming from a woman.”

The smile on her face was brief, like a cat spotting a mouse. “You want me to piss him off?”

“Not on purpose.”

“What are we looking for?”

“I just want a sense of him,” he said. “Find out about his dealings with Abby. Float out Rebecca’s name. See if he bites.”

“All right.”

“I want to talk to Patty O’Ryan again, too. We need to find out if Chip was seeing anybody.”

“Anybody like Rebecca Bennett?”

Sometimes the way Lena ’s mind worked scared him. He just shrugged. “Buddy said he’d be here in a couple of hours.”

She tossed her Coke into the garbage as she headed toward the interrogation room. “Looking forward to that.”

Jeffrey opened the door for her and watched Lena transform into the cop he knew she could be. Her gait was heavy, like she had brass balls hanging between her legs. She pulled out a chair and sat across from Cole Connolly without a word, legs parted, her chair a few feet back from the table. She rested her arm along the back of the empty chair beside her.

She said, “Hey.”

Cole’s eyes flashed to Jeffrey, then back to Lena. “Hey.”

She reached into her back pocket, took out her notebook and slapped it on the table. “I’m detective Lena Adams. This is Chief Jeffrey Tolliver. Could you give us your full name?”

“Cletus Lester Connolly, ma’am.” There was a pen and a few pieces of paper in front of him alongside a well-worn Bible. Connolly straightened the papers as Jeffrey leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. He was at least sixty-five if he was a day, but Connolly was still a fastidious man, his white T-shirt crisp and clean, sharp creases ironed into his jeans. His time in the fields had kept his body trim, his chest well developed, his biceps bulging from his sleeves. Wiry white hair jutted up all over his body, sticking out from the collar of his T-shirt, sprouting from his ears, carpeting his arms. He was pretty much covered in it on every place but for his bald head.

Lena asked, “Why do they call you Cole?”

“That was my father’s name,” he explained, his eyes wandering back to Jeffrey. “Got tired of being beat up for being named Cletus. Lester’s not much better, so I took my daddy’s name when I was fifteen.”

Jeffrey thought that at the very least this explained why the man hadn’t come up on any computer checks. There was no doubt that he had been in the system for a while, though. He had that alertness about him that came from being in prison. He was always on guard, always looking for his escape.

“What happened to your hand?” Lena asked, and Jeffrey noticed that there was a thin, one-inch cut on the back of Connolly’s right index finger. It wasn’t anything significant- certainly not a fingernail scratch or defensive wound. It looked more like the kind of injury that happened when you were working with your hands and stopped paying attention for a split second.

“Working in the fields,” Connolly admitted, looking at the cut. “Guess I should put a Band-Aid on it.”

Lena asked, “How long were you in the service?”

He seemed surprised, but she indicated the tattoo on his arm. Jeffrey recognized it as a military insignia, but he wasn’t sure which branch. He also recognized the crude tattoo below it as of the prison variety. At some point, Connolly had pricked his skin with a needle, using the ink from a ballpoint pen to stain the words “Jesus Saves” indelibly into his flesh.

“I was in twelve years before they kicked me out,” Connolly answered. Then, as if he knew where this was going, he added, “They told me I could either go into treatment or get booted.” He smacked his palms together, a plane leaving the ground. “Dishonorable discharge.”

“That must’ve been hard.”

“Sure was,” he agreed, placing his hand on the Bible. Jeffrey doubted this meant the man was going to tell the truth, but it painted a pretty picture. Cole obviously knew how to answer a question without giving away too much. He was a textbook study in evasion, maintaining eye contact, keeping his shoulders back and adding in a non sequitur to the equation. “But not as hard as living life on the outside.”

Lena gave him a little rope. “How’s that?”

He kept his hand on the Bible as he explained, “I got banged up for boosting a car when I was seventeen. Judge told me I could go into the army or go to jail. I went right from my mama’s tit to Uncle Sam’s, excuse the language.” He had a sparkle in his eye as he said this. It took a few minutes for a man to let down his guard with Lena, then he started to treat her as one of the boys. Right before their eyes, Cole Connolly had turned into a helpful old man, eager to answer their questions- at least the ones he deemed safe.