Kisscut

  Jeffrey did not know what to do with her now. He had put Lena with Brad Stephens on a temporary basis until her hands healed, hoping the downtime would help her ease back into her job. Just last month she had gotten a clearance from her doctor to return to active duty, but Lena had yet to ask for her old assignment back. For Frank’s part, he could not even look her in the eye when she said hello to him. Jeffrey had heard Frank say a million times that women did not belong on the force, and Frank seemed to take Lena’s attack as confirmation of this.

  Logically, Jeffrey did not agree with Frank’s assessment. Women cops were good for the force. Ideally, the makeup of the force should reflect that of the community. Lena had brought a thoughtfulness to the job. She was better with certain types of perpetrators and knew how to handle female victims of crime, something that had been missing in the senior squad prior to her promotion. What’s more, having a female detective had encouraged other women to join the ranks. There were fifteen women on patrol now. When Ben Walker had left the force, the only women in its employ had been secretaries. Despite all of this progress, when Jeffrey thought about what Lena had gone through, what had been done to her, he wanted to lock her up in her house and stand outside with a shotgun in case anyone ever tried to hurt her again.

  Frank interrupted his thoughts, asking, “There gonna be some kind of internal investigation on this thing?” He paused, picking at the corner of the case file. “The Weaver shooting, I mean.”

  Jeffrey nodded, sitting back in his chair. “I talked to the mayor this morning. I want you to take Brad and Lena’s statements. Buddy Conford’s the city attorney on this one.”

  “He’s a public defender,” Frank pointed out.

  “Yeah, well, not on this one,” Jeffrey told him. “There’s some concern about the girl’s mother. The city has an insurance policy for this kind of thing. Maybe they’ll settle it out of court. I dunno.” Jeffrey shrugged. “She was threatening someone with a gun and all. It’s just kind of tricky, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Frank answered. “I know.” He waited a few beats, then asked, “You okay with this, Chief?”

  Jeffrey felt some of his resolve falter. The sinking, lost feeling he had experienced last night with Sara came back, and he felt a heaviness in his chest. He had never shot anyone, let alone killed a little girl. His mind kept playing back the scene with Jenny, picking apart the clock, trying to find the place where his negotiations had gone sour. There had to be something else he could have said or done that would have made her put down that gun. There had to be an alternative.

  “Chief?” Frank said. “For what it’s worth, Brad and Lena will back you a hundred percent. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah,” Jeffrey answered, not taking comfort in Frank’s words because he knew that Brad and Lena would back him even if they did not think what Jeffrey had done was right. There were gray areas in law enforcement, but when it came down to the wire, cops always backed cops. Brad would do this because at some level he worshipped Jeffrey. Lena would do it because she felt she owed Jeffrey something for letting her back on the job.

  For Jeffrey, this was hardly a consolation.

  Both men were silent. Jeffrey turned his head, looking at the shelves lining the far wall of his office. Shooting trophies were there, awarded for his marksmanship. An old football from when he played for Auburn was on the bottom shelf. Pictures of guys he had worked with on the job in Grant as well as back in Birmingham were alongside a couple of snapshots of Sara he had taken on their honeymoon. He had put these up recently, when they started dating again. Now, he wasn’t so sure about wanting the pictures in his office, let alone wanting Sara in his life. Jeffrey still could not get over how distant she had been last night, tensing up when he touched her, telling him what to do. Like he didn’t know how to do what he was doing. Like he hadn’t done it hundreds of times before with other women who were a hell of a lot more receptive than Sara had been.

  Frank turned around in his chair when the half-doors separating the squad room from the reception area clapped open. Sara walked through, her briefcase in one hand. She was dressed in a light blue dress that looked like a long T-shirt. Jeffrey could see she had decided to go with tennis shoes without socks to complete the ensemble. She probably hadn’t even shaved her legs.

  Both men watched as Sara made her way to the office. Her hair was a mess and Jeffrey wondered if she had even bothered to comb it. Sara had never been the kind of woman who was interested in high fashion and she seldom wore makeup. Sometimes this was sexy, sometimes it made her look sloppy, like she was more interested in being a doctor than being a woman. As she got closer to them, he could see that her glasses were crooked on her face. For some reason, this irritated him more than anything else.

  Frank stood when she entered the room, so Jeffrey followed suit.

  “Hi,” she said, smiling nervously. Jeffrey was glad she was uncomfortable.

  “Hey there,” Frank said, buttoning his jacket.

  Sara smiled at Frank, then said, “I’ve called Nick Shelton,” referring to Grant County’s Georgia Bureau of Investigations field agent. “I asked him to track any cases involving this kind of mutilation. He said he’d have something Wednesday at the latest.”

  When Jeffrey did not address this, Frank supplied, “Good thinking.”

  “And,” Sara continued, “I called around to the hospitals. Nobody came in last night seeking postlabor treatment. I left the number here at the station in case they get someone in.”

  Frank pulled at the collar of his shirt. “So, you think there’s any way the girl could have done this to herself? This circumcision thing?”

  “God, no.” Sara seemed to bristle at this. “And, it’s not circumcision,” she told him. “This is tantamount to castration. Her clitoris and labia minora were completely scraped away, then what was left was sewn together with thread.”

  “Oh,” Frank said, obviously uncomfortable with this information.

  Sara pursed her lips. “It’s the same as cutting off a man’s penis.”

  Frank looked uncomfortably from Jeffrey to Sara, then back again.

  “Anyway.” Sara gestured to her briefcase. “I’m ready to start the briefing.”

  “That’s been postponed,” Jeffrey said, hearing the hard tone to his voice but unable to do anything about it. When he had called to ask Sara to come in early, he had not mentioned why. He told her, “Dottie Weaver will be here in about fifteen minutes. I want to get her out of here as soon as I can.”

  “Oh,” she said, surprised. “Okay. I guess I can do some paperwork at the clinic. You think a couple of hours will do it?”

  He shook his head no. “I want you to sit in on the interview.”

  Sara gave him a careful look. “I’m not a cop.”

  “Lena is,” he told her. “She’ll be leading the interview. I want you there because she knows you.”

  She tucked her hand into her hip. “Lena or Dottie?”

  Frank cleared his throat. “I got some calls to make,” he said, giving Sara a polite nod before leaving the room.

  After he was gone, Sara turned to Jeffrey, giving him a questioning look.

  He asked, “Is that a nightgown?”

  “What?”

  “What you’re wearing,” he said, indicating her dress. “It looks like a nightgown.”

  Sara laughed uncomfortably. “No,” she said, as if he was leaving out some part of the joke.

  “You could have worn something more professional,” he said, thinking about what she had worn last night. Her sweat pants and a ratty old T-shirt didn’t exactly help the situation. And her legs had felt hairier than his.

  He asked, “Would it kill you to dress up a little bit?”

  Sara lowered her voice, the way she did when she got angry. “Is there some reason you’re talking to me like you’re my mother?”

  He felt a flash of anger that was so intense he knew not to open his mouth and say what wanted to come out.
>
  “Jeff,” Sara said, “what is going on?”

  He walked past her and slammed the door shut. “Would it kill you to do me this one favor?”

  “Favor?” She shook her head, as if he had started talking gibberish.

  “Sit in on the interview,” he reminded her. “With Weaver.”

  Sara exhaled sharply. “What could I possibly say to her?”

  “Never mind,” he answered. To give himself something to do, he closed the blinds. “Just forget about it.”

  “Just tell me what you want me to do,” she said, her voice irritatingly reasonable. “Do you want me to go home and change? Do you want me to leave you alone?”

  He turned around, saying, “I want you to stop breaking my balls, is what I want you to do.”

  Sara tucked in her chin. It seemed to be her turn to hold back something she wanted to say.

  He raised his eyebrows, prompting her to speak. “What?” he demanded, knowing he was pushing her, wanting a fight to release some of the anger he felt.

  Sara took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I don’t understand why you’re so angry at me.”

  Jeffrey did not answer.

  She smoothed down his tie with the back of her fingers, then put her palm to his chest. “Jeff, please. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  Words failed him. He turned away from her and then, because there was nothing else for him to do, he twisted the wand to open the blinds again. He felt Sara’s hand on his shoulder.

  She said, “It’s all right.”

  “I know that,” he snapped, but he didn’t. He felt like his brain was on fire, and every time he blinked all he could see was Jenny Weaver’s head jerking back as the bullet cut through her neck.

  Sara put her arms around him, then pressed her lips against the back of his neck. “It’s okay,” she whispered against his neck, and he felt the coolness of her breath calming him. She kissed his neck again, holding her lips there for what seemed like a long time. His body started to relax, and Jeffrey wondered why she hadn’t done this last night. Then he remembered that she had.

  She told him again, “It’s all right.”

  He felt calm for the first time that morning, like he could breathe again. It felt so good that for just a second he thought he might do something really stupid, like cry or, worse, tell Sara that he loved her.

  He asked, “You gonna sit in on the interview or not?”

  She let her hands drop, and he could tell this was not the reaction she had been hoping for. He looked at her, trying to think of something to say. Nothing came to mind.

  Finally, she nodded once, telling him, “I’ll do whatever you want me to do.”

  JEFFREY stood in the observation room, watching through the one-way mirror as Sara comforted Dottie Weaver. He had never been able to stay mad at Sara for long, mostly because Sara would not allow it.

  Dottie Weaver was a largeish woman with dark brown hair and olive colored skin. Her hair looked long, but she kept it in a neat bun on top of her head. The style was a bit dated, but it seemed to suit her. She had what Jeffrey thought of as an older face, the kind where the person looks the same at ten as she does at forty. Her cheeks were more jowls, and she carried about twenty pounds more on her than she should have. There were deep creases in her forehead above her nose, which gave her a stern look, even when she was crying.

  Jeffrey glanced at Lena, who was standing beside him with her arms crossed over her chest. She was watching Sara and Dottie with her usual focused intensity. Here they were, the two most emotionally raw people in the station, responsible for finding out what had happened the night before. Jeffrey knew then that he had asked Sara to do this for selfish reasons. She would act as his sanity.

  Jeffrey turned to Lena, telling her, “I’m using you.”

  She did not react, but that was hardly uncommon. Six months ago, Lena Adams would have been rabid for this interview. She would have strutted through the station, flaunting the fact that she had been chosen by the chief. Now, she just nodded.

  “Because you’re a woman,” he clarified. “And because of what happened to you.”

  She looked at him, and there was an emptiness to her eyes that struck him to his core. Ten years ago, at the training academy in Macon, Jeffrey had watched Lena fly through the obstacle course like a bat out of hell. At five-four and around a hundred twenty pounds, she was the smallest recruit in her group, but she made up for it by sheer force of will. Her tenacity and drive had caught his attention that day. Looking at her now, he wondered if that Lena would ever show herself again.

  Lena broke eye contact, staring back at Sara. “Yeah, I guess she’ll feel sorry for me,” she said, her tone flat. It unnerved him the way she did not seem to feel anything. He even preferred her intense anger to the automaton Lena seemed to be lately.

  “Go slowly,” he advised, handing her the case file. “We need as much information as we can get.”

  “Anything else?” she asked. They could have been discussing the weather.

  Jeffrey told her no and she left without another word. He turned back to the mirror, waiting for Lena to enter the interview room. When the young detective had returned to her job, Jeffrey had told her she would have to get some kind of therapy to deal with what had happened. As far as he knew, Lena had not. He should ask her about this. Jeffrey knew that. He just did not know how.

  The door creaked as Lena opened it. She walked into the room, her hands tucked into the pockets of her dress slacks. She was wearing tan chinos with a dark blue button-down dress shirt. Her shoulder-length brown hair was tucked back neatly behind her ears. At thirty-three years old, she had finally grown into her face. Lena had always been attractive, but in the last couple of years she had developed a womanliness that was not lost on the senior squad.

  Jeffrey looked away, uncomfortable with these thoughts. After what she had been through, it felt wrong for him to be considering Lena this way.

  “Mrs. Weaver?” Lena asked. She extended her hand, and Jeffrey cringed along with Dottie Weaver as they both stared at Lena’s open palm. The scar in the center was horrible to see. Sara was the only one who did not seem to react.

  Lena withdrew her hand, clenching it by her side as if she was embarrassed. “I’m Detective Lena Adams. I can’t tell you how sorry I am for your loss.”

  “Thank you,” Dottie managed, her Midwestern twang a sharp contrast to Lena’s soft drawl.

  Lena sat opposite Sara and Dottie at the table. She clasped her hands in front of her, drawing attention to her scars again. Jeffrey half expected her to take off her shoes and put her feet on the table.

  “I’m sorry…,” Dottie began, then stopped. “I mean, for what happened with you.”

  Lena nodded her head once, staring down as if she needed to collect herself. One of the first interrogation tricks Jeffrey had taught the young detective was that silence is a cop’s best friend. Normal people do not like silence, and invariably they try to fill it. Most of the time, they do this without letting their brain enter the equation.

  “And your sister,” Dottie continued. “She was a lovely person. I knew her from the science fair. Jenny loved science. She was…”

  Lena’s chest rose and fell as she took a deep breath, but that was all the reaction she gave. “Sibyl was a teacher,” Lena supplied. “She loved teaching kids.”

  The room was silent again, and Jeffrey found himself staring at Sara. Strands of her dark red hair had fallen loose from her ponytail and were sticking to her neck. Her glasses were no longer crooked on her nose, they were crooked on the top of her head. She was staring at Lena the way she might stare at a snake, trying to decide whether or not it was poisonous.

  Lena asked, “Do we need to contact your husband, Mrs. Weaver?”

  “Dottie,” the mother answered. “I’ve already told him.”

  “Will he be coming down for the funeral?”

  Dottie was quiet, and she fidgeted with a thin silver brace
let on her wrist. When she spoke, she directed her words to Sara. “You cut her open, didn’t you?”

  Sara opened her mouth as if to respond, but Lena answered the question.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lena said. “Dr. Linton performed the autopsy. I attended the procedure. We wanted to do everything we could to make sure Jenny was taken care of.”

  Dottie stared from Lena to Sara, then back again. Suddenly, she leaned over the table, her shoulders stooped as if she had been punched in the gut. “She was my only child,” she sobbed. “She was my baby.”

  Sara reached out to touch the grieving woman on the back, but Lena stopped her with a look. She leaned forward herself and took Dottie’s hand in her own. Lena told the woman, “I know what it’s like to lose someone. I really do.”

  Dottie squeezed Lena’s hands. “I know you do. I know.”

  Jeffrey realized he had been holding his breath, waiting for this moment. Lena had broken through.

  Lena asked, “What happened with her father?”

  “Oh.” Dottie took a tissue out of her purse. “You know. We weren’t getting along. He wanted to do more with his life. He ended up running away with his secretary.” She turned to Sara. “You know how men are.”

  Jeffrey felt mildly irritated, because she was obviously referring to Jeffrey’s infidelities. Such was the nature of a small town.

  “He never married her, though,” Dottie finished. “The secretary.” Her lips curved in a slight, triumphant smile.

  “My best friend in high school went through this,” Lena began, making the bridge between her and Dottie Weaver more solid. “Her father did the same thing to them. He just picked up one day and never looked back. They never saw him again.”

  “Oh, no. Samuel wasn’t like that,” Dottie provided. “Not in the beginning, anyway. He saw Jenny once a month until he got transferred to Spokane. That’s in Washington.” Lena nodded and Dottie continued, “I think the last time he saw her was over a year ago.”