Karin Slaughter - A Faint Cold Fear

“Not if you cooperate.” Jeffrey pulled out a notebook and a pen. He slid them over to Fletcher, saying, “I know this is your first offense, Ron. We’ll try to keep you from doing jail time, but you’ve got to tell us what’s in your apartment. If I go there and find something that you haven’t mentioned, then I’m going to tell the judge to give you the maximum sentence.”

“Okay, man,” Fletcher said. “Okay. Meth. I’ve got a little meth, and it’s under my mattress.”

Jeffrey indicated the pen and paper.

Fletcher started to write, offering a running narrative of his house. “There’s some pot in the fridge, in the butter-dish area. What’s that you call where the butter goes?”

Jeffrey offered, “Butter compartment?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Fletcher nodded, going back to his pad.

Jeffrey stood, thinking he had better things to do than this. He left the door open so he could watch Fletcher from the hallway.

Frank asked, “What’s up?”

Jeffrey lowered his voice, telling Frank, “I’m going to go talk to Jill Rosen again, see what she can give me.”

“How’s the kid doing?”

Jeffrey felt his mood darken at the thought of Lena. “I talked to Nan Thomas this morning. I dunno. Maybe I’ll go by and see if she’s willing to press charges.”

“She won’t do it,” Frank said, and Jeffrey knew he was right.

Jeffrey said, “You could talk to her,” and Frank reacted as if Jeffrey had suggested he slap his own mother with a wet rag. Since Lena’s attack Frank had not known how to deal with his ex-partner. Jeffrey sometimes understood the other man’s reaction, but he could not imagine anything that would make him abandon his own partner. There were cops back in Birmingham that Jeffrey had not seen in years who could call him anytime and he would be in his car in seconds on the way to Alabama.

Jeffrey said, “I’m not going to order you to go see her, but I think if you reached out—”

Frank coughed into his hand.

Jeffrey tried again. “She trusts you, Frank. Maybe you could lead her down the right path.”

“Looks to me like she’s already chosen which path she wants to take.” He got a steely look to his eyes, and Jeffrey remembered how hard it had been to pull Frank off Ethan White yesterday. If Jeffrey had left him to it, White would probably be dead right now.

“She’ll listen to you,” Jeffrey said. “You might be our last chance to get through to her.”

Frank ignored this so smoothly that Jeffrey wondered if he had even said it.

With a wave of his hand, Frank indicated Fletcher, who was already working on the second page of his confession. “You want me to toss his place?”

“Yeah,” Jeffrey said, aware of the distinct possibility that Fletcher was a very convincing liar. “Go ahead and process him for the pot in his locker. We’ll see what sticks on him at the end of the day.”

“What about White?” Frank said. “You gonna cut him loose?”

Jeffrey had called on the Macon sheriff to keep White in lockup, not trusting his own people to leave the kid alone. “I’m going to hold him as long as I can, but if Lena doesn’t file charges, there’s not a hell of a lot I can do.”

“What about DNA?”

“You know that takes a week at least,” Jeffrey reminded him. “And even if it comes back, it doesn’t matter if she keeps insisting it was consensual.”

Frank gave a tight nod. “You going to Atlanta tonight?”

Jeffrey said, “Yeah, probably,” even though the last thing Sara had said to him last night was to leave her alone for a while. There was going to come a day when she’d say that to him and really mean it. He hoped like hell that was not now.

Jeffrey walked to the Rosen-Keller house, needing the time to clear his mind. Guilt was piling up this week, from Tessa’s stabbing to Lena’s attack. Last night in the jail, all he had wanted to do was put his arm around her and make it better. He had known in his gut that this was the last thing Lena needed, and the next best thing Jeffrey could do was find out who had started all of this in the first place. No physical evidence had shown an intruder in the security office. There was no one who had a specific grudge against Chuck and, other than the general consensus that he was an asshole, no one could think of a reason for someone to kill him. Even if he was skimming something off the top of Fletcher’s drug trade, it was Fletcher who would be punished, not Chuck.

The red Mustang was still parked in the driveway where Jeffrey had seen it last. He walked to the front porch and knocked on the door, tucking his hands into his pockets as he waited. A few minutes passed, and he peered into the window, wondering if Jill Rosen had really left her husband.

He knocked on the door a couple more times before leaving. Jeffrey was halfway down the driveway when he changed his mind. He walked toward the back of the house, to Andy Rosen’s apartment. Fletcher had said that Andy wanted to celebrate Saturday night. Maybe Jeffrey could figure out what the boy was so happy about.

Jeffrey knocked on the door to the apartment, not wanting to interrupt Jill Rosen if she was packing up her son’s things. He tried the doorknob.

“Hello?” he called, walking into the small apartment. Much like the main house, whoever decorated the interior of Andy’s apartment had not been back since. An orange shag rug covered the floor, and the walls were a dark pine paneling that bowed out in places. There was a bathroom right beside the door with a sitting room behind it. Tattered posters for rap groups were taped haphazardly over the walls. Two pyramids of beer cans stacked about three feet high flanked either side of a big-screen television.

An easel by the window held a rough sketch of another nude woman, this one thankfully not in color. Jeffrey picked through the plastic crate of art supplies on the floor, finding several cans of paint thinner and a couple cans of aerosol paint. At the bottom of the crate, he found two tubes of airplane glue and a used-looking rag. He sniffed the rag and nearly passed out from the chemicals.

“Christ,” Jeffrey said. Under the sink he found four more aerosol cans. In the small bathroom were four cans of spray toilet-bowl cleaner. Either Andy Rosen was a neat freak or he was huffing—inhaling glue and aerosols to get high. Sara would not have found that on the tox screen unless she had specified that the lab look for it.

Jeffrey scanned the room for other signs of drug use. Scattered on the floor was paraphernalia for a video-game player and several CDs that were out of their cases. The entertainment center had a DVD player, a VCR, a CD player, an elaborate stereo receiver, and a surround-sound speaker. Either Andy was dealing or his parents had taken out a second mortgage to keep him in electronics.

The bedroom of the apartment was sectioned off by a series of wooden screens. Behind them the bed was unmade and wrinkled. The scent of sweat and cocoa-butter hand lotion hung in the air. A lamp by the bed had a red scarf draped over its shade, as if to set the mood.

The drawers and closet in the bedroom had already been searched, but Jeffrey felt compelled to check again. Three or four shirts hung in the closet, T-shirts overflowing from shelves built into the sides. Three pairs of worn-looking blue jeans were on the top shelf, and he unfolded them, checking the pockets of each one before throwing them back onto the shelf.

Several shoe boxes were on the floor of the closet, most of them containing shiny new sneakers. One of them held a stack of photographs and a bunch of Andy’s old report cards. Jeffrey read the report cards, which showed a hell of a lot more promise than his own had, then looked through the photographs. Jill Rosen and Brian Keller remained pretty much the same in each picture, but the scenery behind them changed, from roller coasters to water slides, from the Smithsonian to the Grand Canyon. Andy was in very few of the photographs, and Jeffrey imagined that he had elected himself family photographer.