Karin Slaughter - Faithless

“I was trying to pull it down,” Brock told her, indicating the woman’s jacket, which was bunched up around her shoulders. “She’s kind of husky. If you could hold up her legs and I could pull…”

She heard herself saying, “Sure,” even though this was the last thing she wanted to do with her morning. She lifted the woman’s legs at the ankles and Brock made quick work pulling down the suit jacket, talking all the while. “I didn’t want to have to tote her back downstairs to the pulley and Mama’s just not up to helping with this kind of thing anymore.”

Sara lowered the legs. “Is she okay?”

“Sciatica,” he whispered, as if his mother might be embarrassed by the affliction. “It’s terrible when they start getting old. Anyway.” He tucked his hand around the coffin, straightening the silk lining. When he was finished, he rubbed his palms together as if to wash his hands of the task. “Thanks for helping me with that. What can I do you for?”

“Oh.” Sara had almost forgotten why she came. She walked back to the front row of chairs where she had put Abby’s paperwork. “I told Paul Ward I’d bring the death certificate over to you by Thursday, but I got tied up.”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” Brock said, flashing a smile. “I don’t even have Chip back from the crematorium yet.”

“Chip?”

“Charles,” he said. “Sorry, Paul called him Chip, but I guess that can’t be his real name.”

“Why would Paul want Charles Donner’s death certificate?”

Brock shrugged, as if the request was the most natural thing in the world. “He always gets the death certificates when people from the farm pass.”

Sara leaned her hand against the back of the chair, feeling the need to grab onto something solid. “How many people die on the farm?”

“No,” Brock laughed, though she didn’t see what was funny. “I’m sorry I gave you the wrong impression. Not a lot. Two earlier this year-Chip makes three. I guess there were a couple last year.”

“That seems like a lot to me,” Sara told him, thinking he had left out Abigail, which would bring the tally to four this year alone.

“Well, I suppose,” Brock said slowly, as if the peculiarity of the circumstances had just occurred to him. “But you have to think about the types of folks they’ve got over there. Derelicts, mostly. I think it’s real Christian of the family to pick up the handling costs.”

“What did they die of?”

“Let’s see,” Brock began, tapping his finger against his chin. “All natural causes, I can tell you that. If you can call drinking and drugging yourself to death natural causes. One of ’em, this guy, was so full of liquor it took less than three hours to render his cremains. Came with his own accelerant. Skinny guy, too. Not a lot of fat.”

Sara knew fat burned more easily than muscle, but she didn’t like being reminded of it so soon after breakfast. “And the others?”

“I’ve got copies of the certificates in the office.”

“They came from Jim Ellers?” Sara asked, meaning Catoogah’s county coroner.

“Yep,” Brock said, waving her back toward the hall.

Sara followed, feeling uneasy. Jim Ellers was a nice man, but like Brock he was a funeral director, not a physician. Jim always sent his more difficult cases to Sara or the state lab. She couldn’t recall anything other than a gunshot wound and a stabbing that had been transferred to her office from Catoogah over the last eight years. Jim must have thought the deaths at the farm were pretty standard. Maybe they were. Brock had a point about the workers being derelicts. Alcoholism and drug addiction were hard diseases to manage, and left untreated, they generally led to catastrophic health problems and eventual death.

Brock opened a set of large wooden pocket doors to the room where the kitchen had once been. The space was now his office, and a massive desk was in the center, paperwork heaped in the in-box.

He apologized: “Mama’s been a little too poorly to straighten up.”

“It’s okay.”

Brock went over to the row of filing cabinets along the back of the room. He put his fingers to his chin again, tapping, not opening any drawers.

“Something wrong?”

“I might need a minute to try to think of their names.” He grinned apologetically. “Mama’s so much better at remembering these things than I am.”

“Brock, this is important,” she told him. “Go get your mother.”

Yes, ma’am,” Jeffrey said into the telephone, rolling his eyes at Lena. She could tell that Barbara, Paul Ward’s secretary, was giving him everything but her social security number. The woman’s tinny voice was so loud that Lena could hear it from five feet away.

“That’s good,” he said . “Yes, ma’am.” He leaned his head against his hand. “Oh, excuse me- excuse-” he tried, then, “I’ve got another call. Thank you.” He hung up, Barbara’s cackling coming out of the earpiece even as he dropped the receiver back on the hook.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, rubbing his ear. “Literally.”

“She try to save your soul?”

“Let’s just say she’s really happy to be involved with the church.”

“So, she’d say anything she could to cover for Paul?”

“Probably,” he agreed, sitting back in his chair. He looked down at his notes, which consisted of three words. “She confirms what Paul said about being in Savannah. She even remembered working late with him the night Abby died.”

Lena knew that pinpointing time of death wasn’t an exact science. “All night?”

“That’s a point,” he allowed. “She also said Abby came by with some papers a couple of days before she went missing.”

“Did she seem okay?”

“Said she was a little ray of sunshine, as usual. Paul signed some papers, they went to lunch and he took her back to the bus station.”

“They could’ve had some kind of altercation during lunch.”

“True,” he agreed. “But why would he kill his niece?”

“It could be his baby she was carrying,” Lena suggested. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Jeffrey rubbed his jaw. “Yeah,” he admitted, and she could tell the thought left a bad taste in his mouth. “But Cole Connolly was pretty sure it was Chip’s.”

“Are you sure Cole didn’t poison her?

“As close to sure as I can be,” he told her. “Maybe we need to separate out the two, forget worrying about who killed Abby. Who killed Cole? Who would want him dead?”

Lena wasn’t entirely convinced of Connolly’s truthfulness about Abby’s death. Jeffrey had been pretty shaken up after watching the man die. She wondered if his conviction of Cole’s innocence was influenced by what had to have been a truly grotesque experience.

She suggested, “Maybe somebody who knew Cole had poisoned Abby decided to get revenge, wanted him to suffer the same way Abby had.”

“I didn’t tell anyone in the family that she was poisoned until after Cole was dead,” he reminded her. “On the other hand, whoever did it knew he drank coffee every morning. He told me the sisters were always on him, trying to get him to quit.”

Lena took it a step further. “Rebecca might know, too.”

Jeffrey nodded. “There’s a reason she’s staying away.” He added, “At least I hope she’s choosing to stay away.”

Lena had been thinking this same thing. “You’re sure Cole didn’t put her somewhere? To punish her for something?”

“I know you think I shouldn’t take him at his word,” Jeffrey began, “but I don’t think he took her. People like Cole know who to choose.” He leaned across his desk, hands clasped in front of him, as if he was saying something vital to the case. “They pick the ones they know won’t talk. It’s the same way with Dale picking Terri. These guys know who they can push around- who will shut up and take it and who won’t.”