Karin Slaughter - Indelible

"Stop dicking around, boy," Robert demanded, his tone harder than Jeffrey had ever heard it. Robert was Reggie's superior, and he was giving him an order when he said, "Cuff me and read me my rights. Do it by the book."

Jessie came in, her drink topped off to the rim. "Y'all want something to…" Her voice trailed off as for once she noticed that she was not the center of some drama. Her eyes locked onto Robert's, and in the split second before she managed to control herself, she looked terrified. She recovered quickly, but still put her hand to the doorjamb like she needed something to keep her from falling over. "What did you tell them?"

Robert's eyes watered again, and his voice was full of regret as he said, "The truth, baby. I told them the truth." Again, he held out his hands to Reggie. "Luke Swan was having an affair with my wife. I came home and found them together, and I shot him." He shook his hands. "Come on, Reggie. Get it over with."

Jessie murmured, "Oh, Jesus."

Robert said, "Cuff me."

Reggie put his hand to the back of his belt, but he did not get his handcuffs. "I'm not cuffing you," he said. "I'll take you to the station to talk to Hoss, but no way I'm putting handcuffs on you."

"Reggie, I'm ordering you."

"No fucking way," Reggie said. "Not that I wouldn't love to see you riding in the back of my car, but I ain't gonna have Hoss come down on me for something you did." He added, "Not this time, anyway."

"You need to do this by the book," Robert told him.

Reggie would not relent. "I'll go crank up the car, let it cool down a little. You come out when you're ready."

"I'm ready now," Robert said. When Jeffrey moved to follow them, he held up his hand. "No, Jeffrey. Let me do this alone."

Jessie was still in the doorway, and Robert had to pass his wife to leave. Jeffrey watched as Robert kissed her cheek, saw the way Jessie flinched away from his touch, try as she might to pretend she wasn't. Jeffrey wanted to grab her and shake her, to throw her to the ground and throttle the life out of her, for treating Robert this way. There was no way he had killed a man. Jeffrey did not buy it. Something was not right here.

Still, when Robert asked Jeffrey, "Look after Jess for me, will you?" Jeffrey nodded.

He told Robert, "I'll be up at the station later."

"Jess," Robert said. "Give him the keys to my truck." He managed a sad smile. "I don't guess I'll be needing it for a while."

"Don't say anything to them, not even Hoss," Jeffrey coached. "We need to find you a lawyer."

Robert left the room without responding. Seconds later, the screen door popped shut.

"Well," Jessie said, then took a long drink. The glass had been nearly full when she started and she had left little more than the ice cubes. Jeffrey watched her throat work as she drank it all down, wondering how she could appear to be so calm with her husband on the way to being charged with murder.

Jessie sucked an ice cube into her mouth before dropping it back into the glass. "This must be the best day of that old hick's life." She waited for Jeffrey to say something, but he did not oblige. "Reggie's been waiting like a hawk lo these many years, looking for the day Robert stumbled. I'm sure he's planning on swooping in tomorrow and getting that promotion that has so long eluded him."

"Doesn't sound like Robert's the one who stumbled to me," Jeffrey told her, letting all the bile he felt rise out in his tone. This was her fault. She had brought this down on Robert. She had brought this down on all of them.

"Oh, that's just perfect, Slick. So damn typical. He shoots and kills a man and somehow you manage to paint me in the black."

"Why'd you cheat on him?" Jeffrey demanded. "Why?"

She shrugged like it was a casual thing. There was something nervous about her, almost twitchy.

"He was good to you."

"Now, don't go getting on your high horse, Jeffrey Tolliver. You're forgetting who you're talking to."

"I never cheated on anybody," he said, disgusted by the knowing look she gave him. Jeffrey might have done his share of fucking around, but he made certain the women he was involved with knew exactly what they were – or were not – getting into.

He said, "When I make a promise to someone, I keep it. I sure as shit wouldn't run around on my wife."

"Easy to say now," Jessie said, sucking the liquor off another ice cube. She smacked her lips. "You're the worst kind of cheat because you think you're too good to let it happen."

"Don't you even care that he's going to jail? This is a death-penalty state, Jessie. He could end up getting a needle in his arm."

She looked down at her glass, swirling the ice around.

"How'd it start?" Jeffrey demanded. "Were you buying drugs from him?"

"Drugs?" She looked startled. "Robert?"

"Luke Swan," he said. "He was using. Is that how it went down?" He grabbed her arm, looking for needle marks. "You two shot up together and it went from there?"

"You're hurting me."

He pushed up her sleeve, checked the crease of her elbow and under her arm.

"Stop it!"

He checked her other arm, spilling ice onto the floor. "What made you do it, Jessie? What?"

"Goddammit, Slick," she screamed, pushing him away. "Where the hell do you get off?"

"I don't have time for this," Jeffrey said, thinking if he did not get away from Jessie right now he'd really hurt her. With Sara last night, the thought repulsed him, but now he wanted nothing more than to smack some sense into Jessie.

He said, "Give me Robert's keys."

She held his gaze for a second longer, then said, "They're in my purse in the kitchen." She waited a beat, like she wanted to make sure he knew she was making a choice. "I'll go get them."

Jeffrey paced in the doorway as he waited for her. He was sick of this crap. It was one thing for Reggie to break his balls, but he sure as shit wasn't going to take it from Robert's cheating wife.

"Here go," Jessie said, coming back from the kitchen with a full drink in one hand and the keys in the other.

"You're some piece of work," he said, holding out his hand for the keys.

She gave him a strange look that he could not quite read. "I should have married you."

"I don't recall asking."

She laughed like what he had said was the funniest thing she'd heard all day. "You watch, Slick."

"Watch what?"

"That Sara of yours sure seems to have you tied around her little finger."

"Leave her out of this."

"Why, because she's better than me?"

It was true, but Jeffrey didn't want to get into it. He had learned the hard way that you could not reason with a drunk. "Give me the damn keys."

"You're gonna marry her, and then you're gonna fuck around on her."

"Jessie, I'm only going to tell you one more time."

"There's gonna come a day when you realize you're not the center of her world anymore, and then you're gonna run out sniffing around for something new. Mark my word."

Jeffrey kept his hand out, forcing himself not to speak.

She held the keys over the palm of his hand and dropped them as she said, "Come see me in a couple of years."

"I'd rather watch my dick rot off."

She smiled, holding up her glass in a toast. "Until then."

Robert's truck was the same piece-of-shit '68 Chevy he had been driving since high school. The gears were temperamental, and the whole truck groaned each time Jeffrey tried to shift. There had to be some art to making the truck move, but that knowledge was lost on Jeffrey. At each stop sign, he lurched like a sixteen-year-old kid just learning to drive, the engine cutting out more often than not as he tried to get the damn thing into first.

Once he drove out of Herd's Gap, he did not know where to go. Sara was probably at the funeral home going over the bones. Hoss was at the station booking Robert. Jeffrey could go home, but his mother would be there for lunch and the last thing he needed was to watch his mother fortifying herself with cheap vodka before she started her second shift at the hospital. Dealing with one alcoholic a day was enough. He was heading toward Nell's, thinking she'd probably already know about Robert's arrest by now, when he remembered Possum.