Karin Slaughter - Skin Privilege

Jeffrey didn't know whether it was just for his benefit, but Jake Valentine was a painfully careful driver. The man never met an intersection he didn't slow down for and he actually stopped at a green light on the outskirts of town, telling Jeffrey, 'It turns red real fast.' He liked to talk, and Jeffrey kept his own counsel, nodding to keep him going as they made the trip to tell Grover Gibson his son had been stabbed to death.

After half an hour of nonstop babbling, Valentine seemed to exhaust himself of talk of the weather and local anecdotes involving high school seniors pulling pranks during homecoming week. Not once had he brought up the reason for their trip, or speculated on who might have killed Boyd Gibson. Jeffrey knew that even Jake Valentine would've dusted the knife sticking out of Boyd's back for prints. He'd have to scan in anything he found and send it to the state lab for cross-referencing. Unless he put a rush on it, and that was seriously doubtful, he'd have something back in a few days.

Jeffrey asked, 'You ever been in a situation like this before?'

'What's that?'

'Known a victim,' Jeffrey answered. 'This Boyd Gibson. You went to high school with him, you said.'

'We ran in different crowds.'

'You were with the jocks and he was with the stoners?'

'Oh, me.' Valentine laughed. 'My daddy's biggest disappointment was me not being able to handle a basketball.' He glanced at Jeffrey. 'Dad was all-state his last year at UGA. Scored thirty-seven points in the last half pretty much on his own. Me, I'm just good for changing lightbulbs and getting down boxes from the top shelf.'

'What made you pick up the badge?'

'Oh.' He waved his hand, dismissing the question. 'Just thought it'd be something to do.'

'Seems like a pretty dangerous job to take up on a whim, considering the last guy who had it was chased out of town.'

'He landed on his feet.'

'Sounds to me like he got when the gettin' was good.'

Valentine gave Jeffrey a sharp look. 'You telling me I should do the same?'

'I'm telling you this is a dangerous job for somebody who doesn't have his heart in it.'

Valentine slowed his car for a turn onto a one-lane dirt road. 'I might just surprise you, Chief.'

'You know what surprises me?' Jeffrey asked, feeling the temperature drop in the car as they got out of the sun and drove down the tree-lined path. 'It surprises me that you don't seem to have any questions.'

'What kind of questions should I have?'

'Start with why my detective gave you the slip,' Jeffrey began. 'Who made Hank Norton disappear? Who got his bar closed down? Who's been setting fires? Who killed your buddy from high school?'

Valentine slowed the car to a stop. He put the car in park and turned toward Jeffrey. Two things occurred to Jeffrey. One was that they were in the middle of nowhere and the other was that Jake Valentine was the only one of them who was armed.

He felt a bead of sweat roll down his back.

Valentine rested his hand on the bottom curve of the steering wheel, his fingers inches from the gun on his belt. He said, 'You look nervous, Chief.'

'I want to know why you stopped.'

'To answer your questions,' he said. 'Come on, let's go for a walk.' He opened the door and got out. Jeffrey sat there, his heart beating hard enough to feel. The lane they were parked on was little more than packed dirt, dense forest on either side. No one knew they were out here but Sara, and there were a lot of excuses she could be told as to why Jeffrey never came back.

Valentine stood in the road a few feet in front of the car. He waved for Jeffrey to get out. 'Come on, Chief.'

Jeffrey opened the door. He'd left his gun in the back of Sara's car, locked in the trunk with their suitcase. He'd thought they were coming here to tell a man that his son was dead, not chase bad guys.

Valentine said, 'It's getting cool out.'

'Yeah,' Jeffrey agreed. He felt the wind stir up as he got out of the car. He'd put on a light jacket over a long-sleeved T-shirt this morning but he didn't zip the jacket closed. He wanted the sheriff to think that Jeffrey wanted to be able to reach into the coat if he needed to.

Jeffrey closed the car door. The lane was covered in fall leaves, the trees bending over to block out the light. It would've been gorgeous if Jeffrey hadn't had the powerful suspicion that he'd been brought out here for some kind of ambush.

'This way.' Valentine started strolling down the lane, slow enough for Jeffrey to catch up.

Jeffrey said, 'I didn't plan on going for a walk.'

'Pretty day for it, though. Might want to zip up your jacket.'

'I'm fine,' Jeffrey assured him.

Valentine reached up and tugged a bright orange leaf from an overhanging branch. He twirled it in his fingers as he talked. 'Good country folk live out here. Real simple people. Most of them, they just wanna go to work, come home to the wife and kids, maybe have enough money left over at the end of the week to get a couple of beers and watch the football game on TV.'

Jeffrey kept his hands at his sides. There was a way you walked when you were carrying a gun, like you had brass ones swinging to your knees. ' Grant County 's not that much different.'

'Guess not.' Valentine let Jeffrey get a foot or so ahead of him. The move was subtle, but Jeffrey knew the other man was looking for the telltale bulge of a gun at his back.

Valentine said, 'Most small towns are alike, I think. Politics and all that crap blurs things, but we all have the same goals whether we're in south Georgia or south France or Timbuktu. We want to feel safe. We want our kids to go to good schools and have the opportunities we didn't. We want to live our lives and feel like we've got some control over our destinies.'

He was sounding like a different person now, the aw-shucks gestures and good-ol'-boy slang all but gone.

'What's this leading up to, Jake?'

He gave Jeffrey a lazy smile. 'This way.' He pointed to a small trail that cut through the woods.

'What's down there?'

'See for yourself.'

This time, Valentine took the lead and Jeffrey followed, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling as they went deeper into the forest. The trail didn't appear to be well-used. The ground sloped downward and Jeffrey slowed his pace, putting some distance between himself and the sheriff. Valentine didn't seem to notice. He kept walking, still twirling the leaf. It wasn't until he reached a small clearing that he stopped, waiting for Jeffrey.

'Lookit this,' Valentine said. He pointed to a sloped rock with a hole in it. A long section of white PVC pipe was propped up against the hole. A trickle of water fed into the pipe.

'It's a natural spring,' Jeffrey said, more than a little surprised. He knelt down to check it out before he could think about what he was doing. He looked up at the sheriff, waited for the man to make his move.

'Here.' Valentine offered his hand, helped Jeffrey stand. 'The pipe goes down the hill here.' He started walking, following the pipe's path. The woods started to clear and the trees thinned out as they made their way down the slope toward what looked like an abandoned shack. Jeffrey guessed they walked about fifty yards before they reached a huge plastic holding tank of springwater. Jeffrey could hear the water dripping into the tank, saw the larger plastic pipe feeding into a shack sitting in the middle of a clearing.

'Plumbing,' Valentine told Jeffrey. 'Springwater goes into the hookup at the house. Cold as a witch's tit if you wanna take a shower, but pretty damn smart, don't you think?'

'Yeah,' Jeffrey agreed. He could see a beat-up Ford parked in front of the shack. A long wire ran from the roof to an electric pole. Except for the small satellite dish angled off the roof, he could be looking at a home circa the Great Depression.