Karin Slaughter - Skin Privilege

The library was small, with about sixteen rows of shelves evenly spaced down the center. Lena walked past each row, trying to find the slender figure she'd seen lurking behind the table of kids.

She found Charlotte Warren in the children's section. Obviously, Charlotte hadn't wanted to be seen. She had her nose tucked into a copy of Pippi Longstocking when Lena said, 'Hey.'

'Oh, Lee,' Charlotte said, her voice going up in mock surprise, as if she hadn't been the one who called Lena on the phone and told her to come down and check on Hank.

Lena told her, 'I found Hank.'

Charlotte shelved the book, taking her time, lining up the spine with the neighboring paperbacks. With her mousy blonde hair and soft voice, Charlotte Warren had been destined from childhood to fill the role of stereotypical American mother, relying on Oprah and Martha Stewart to validate her existence.

Lena asked, 'How long has he been like that?'

'I guess about a month now.'

'He's been hitting it pretty hard.'

'That's why I called.'

'Who's selling to him?'

'Oh.' Charlotte looked away, pushing her thick glasses back in place. 'I don't know anything about that, Lee. I just saw him one day and he didn't look good and I thought that you'd want to know.'

'I don't know what I can do,' Lena admitted. 'He's hell-bent on killing himself.'

'He's been real depressed since Sibyl…' Charlotte didn't need to finish the sentence. They both knew what she meant. She fidgeted with a gold cross she wore on a chain around her neck. 'I wanted to come to her funeral, but the kids were in school, and I just…' She let her voice trail off again. 'You still a cop?'

'Yeah,' Lena answered. 'You still a teacher?'

Charlotte 's smile wavered. 'Going on my sixteenth year.'

'That's good.' Lena tried to think of something else to say. 'Sibyl loved teaching.'

'I'm married now. Did you know?' Lena shook her head and Charlotte supplied, 'I've got three kids and Larry, my husband, he's such a great dad. He takes extra shifts at the factory so the kids can have everything they need. He goes to all the ball games and the school plays and the band concerts. He's a really good man, Lee. I lucked out.'

'Sounds like it.'

'You seeing anybody?'

'No.' Lena had answered too harshly. She felt a warm rush of heat come into her cheeks.

Charlotte glanced over Lena 's shoulder as if she was afraid someone would overhear them. 'I've got to get my girl home, and…' She laughed, but it sounded more like a sob. 'Gosh, you just look so much like her.' She put her hand to Lena 's cheek, let it linger for just a moment too long. Tears came into her eyes, and her lip trembled as she fought back her emotions.

' Charlotte -'

Charlotte took Lena 's hand, squeezed it hard. 'Take care of Hank, Lee. Sibby would've wanted you to look after him.'

Lena watched her walk over to one of the kids sitting at the table. Though Charlotte was a couple of years older than Lena and Sibyl, she had been Sibyl's closest friend. From early childhood until high school, the two were inseparable. They had spent hours together in Sibyl's room, gone to the movies together, even driven down to Florida together every spring break. They had lost touch when Sibyl moved away to go to college, but friendships like that never really went away.

Charlotte was right about one thing. Sibyl would have wanted Lena to take care of Hank. She had loved him like a father. It would have killed her all over again to know he was living like this. But what if she had found out that Hank had lied to them all those years? How would Sibyl have felt about him then?

'It's set up,' the librarian barked from across the room. She tossed a wave at the microfiche machine like she was finished with it.

'Thank you,' Lena returned, though the woman was already jamming her key into the lock to open the elevator and make her escape.

Lena walked back over to the machine. There were other, better ways to go about this. She could call Jeffrey. She could ask him to search the police database for her mother's name. She could go down to the sheriff's office and ask for her father's murder book. She could track down Hank's dealer and put a gun to his head, tell him if he ever so much as talks to her uncle again, she'll splatter his brains all over his shiny, white car.

The dealer was the problem. Jeffrey would want to know why Lena was running her mother's name. Worse, he would probably want to help out. She couldn't very well tell him that her uncle was back on meth and had said some crazy things she wanted to check out. Jeffrey would be on his way to Reece before she could hang up the phone.

Talking to the Elawah sheriff might bring some unwelcome attention as well. Hank was using pretty heavily; he might even be under surveillance. Even without that, over thirty years had passed since Calvin Adams had been murdered. All his case files had probably been lost or destroyed by now.

She had to use the tools that were available to her, and the library was the best place to start. Hank had lied to her about so many things that Lena didn't trust anything anymore. She had to start from the beginning and work her way toward the truth. Maybe when she got a little more information, knew better where she stood, she could go to Jeffrey and elicit his help. She had worked with him long enough to know the questions he would ask. What she had to do now was try to find some of the answers.

Lena took a seat at the machine and scanned the front page of the Elawah Herald.

LOCAL DEPUTY SLAIN

Lena sat on the edge of her chair as she read the story word for word. She couldn't recall the article Hank had shown her when she was a child, but this seemed to be it. All the details were there: Speeding stop. Dead at the scene. No suspects.

So, at least Hank hadn't lied about that.

Lena adjusted the knobs on the machine and scrolled down, overshooting the next edition, then slowly winding her way back. The Herald was a weekly paper, not more than fifteen or twenty pages long, and her father's shooting was the biggest news in town. Each subsequent front page for the next month carried the story, basically regurgitating the same details over and over again. Shot twice in the head. No suspects found.

She pressed the fast-forward button, hoping that she wouldn't have to change the film to find the week of her mother's death. She scrolled into 1971, slowing around the first week of March. She scanned the obituaries for her mother's name, then skipped to the next week's paper, then the next. She was about to give up when she saw a photograph on the front page of the September 19 edition.

Hank had only one photograph of their mother. It was a Polaroid, the colors unnaturally bright. Angela Norton was seventeen or eighteen. She stood on an anonymous beach somewhere in Florida, wearing a modest one-piece white-and-blue checkered bathing suit with a large bow around the waist. Her hair was piled on her head and she stood with her hands at her side, palms down, striking a pose. This had been a time when teenagers wanted to look older, more mature, and Lena had always liked the expression on her mother's face: the pursed lips and serious eyes, the streak of blue eye shadow and the dark, Cleopatralike eyeliner placing the young woman firmly on the precipice of the sexual revolution.

For Lena and Sibyl's sixth birthday, Hank had hired an artist from out of town to do a likeness of

Angela's face. The oil painting hung in the living room over the couch. It had been such a staple of Lena 's life that she barely even looked at it anymore.

She looked at the photograph of her mother in the paper, though. Angela Adams, nee Norton, sat in an old rocking chair Lena recognized from Hank's house. A baby was in either arm, their bodies swaddled in blankets.