Faithless

  “You can sit on a big fat cock up your ass, you cocksucking bitch.”

  There was a knock on the door and Jeffrey walked in, Buddy Conford behind him.

  O’Ryan did an instant one-eighty, bursting into tears like a lost child, wailing at Buddy, “Daddy, please get me out of here! I swear I didn’t do anything!”

  Sitting in Jeffrey’s office, Lena braced her foot against the bottom panel of his desk, leaning back in her chair. Buddy looked at her leg, and she didn’t know if it was with interest or envy. As a teenager, a car accident had taken his right leg from the knee down. Buddy’s left eye had been lost to cancer a few years later and, more recently, an angry client had shot him point-blank range over the matter of a bill. Buddy had lost a kidney from that fiasco, but he still managed to get the charge of attempted murder against his client reduced to simple assault. When he said he was a defendant’s advocate, he wasn’t lying.

  Buddy asked, “That boyfriend of yours staying out of trouble?”

  “Let’s not talk about it,” Lena said, regretting yet again that she had involved Buddy Conford in Ethan’s troubles. The problem was, when you were on the other side of the table and you needed a lawyer, you wanted the wiliest, most crooked one out there. It was the old proverb of lying down with dogs and waking up with fleas. Lena was still itching from it.

  “You taking care of yourself?” Buddy pressed.

  Lena turned around, trying to see what was keeping Jeffrey. He was talking to Frank, a sheet of paper in his hand. He patted Frank on the shoulder, then walked toward the office.

  “Sorry,” Jeffrey said. He shook his head once at Lena, indicating nothing had broken. He sat behind his desk, turning the paper facedown on the blotter.

  “Nice shiner,” Buddy said, indicating Jeffrey’s eye.

  Jeffrey obviously wasn’t up for small talk. “Didn’t know you had a daughter, Buddy.”

  “Stepdaughter,” he corrected, looking as if he regretted having to admit it. “I married her mama last year. We’d been dating off and on for pretty much the last ten years. She’s just a handful of trouble.”

  “The mama or the daughter?” Jeffrey asked, and they shared one of their white-man chuckles.

  Buddy sighed, gripping either side of the chair with his hands. He was wearing his prosthetic leg today, but he still had a cane. For some reason, the cane reminded Lena of Greg Mitchell. Despite her best intentions, she had found herself looking out for her old boyfriend this morning as she drove into work, hoping he was out for a walk. Not that she knew what she’d say to him.

  “Patty’s got a drug problem,” Buddy told them. “We’ve had her in and out of treatment.”

  “Where’s her father?”

  Buddy held his hands out in a wide shrug. “Got me.”

  Lena asked, “Meth?”

  “What else?” he said, dropping his hands. Buddy made a fine living from methamphetamines— not directly, but through representing clients who had been charged with trafficking in it.

  He said, “She’s seventeen years old. Her mama thinks she’s been doing it for a while now. This shooting up is recent. I can’t do anything to stop her.”

  “It’s a hard drug to quit,” Jeffrey allowed.

  “Almost impossible,” Buddy agreed. He should know. More than half of his clients were repeat offenders. “We finally had to kick her out of the house,” he continued. “This was about six months back. She wasn’t doing anything but staying out late, stumbling in high and sleeping till three in the afternoon. When she managed to wake up, it was mostly to curse her mama, curse me, curse the world— you know how it is, everybody’s an asshole but you. She’s got a mouth on her, too, some kind of voluntary Tourette’s. What a mess.” He tapped his leg with his fingers, a hollow, popping sound filling the room. “You do what you can to help people, but there’s only so far you can go.”

  “Where’d she go when she moved out?”

  “Mostly she crashed with friends— girlfriends, though I imagine she was entertaining some boys for pocket change. When she wore out her welcome, she started working at the Kitty.” He stopped tapping. “Believe it or not, I thought that’d finally be the thing to straighten her out.”

  “How’s that?” Lena asked.

  “Only time you help yourself is when you hit rock bottom.” He gave her a meaningful look that made her want to slap him. “I can’t think of anything more rock bottom than taking off your clothes for a bunch of seedy-ass rednecks at the Pink Kitty.”

  Jeffrey asked, “She didn’t happen to get mixed up with the farm over in Catoogah, did she?”

  “Those Jesus freaks?” Buddy laughed. “I don’t think they’d have her.”

  “But do you know?”

  “You can ask her, but I doubt it. She’s not exactly the religious type. If she goes anywhere, it’s looking to score, seeing how she can work the system. They may be a bunch of Bible-thumping lunatics, but they’re not stupid. They’d see right through her in a New York minute. She knows her audience. She wouldn’t waste her time.”

  “You know this guy Chip Donner?”

  “Yeah. I represented him a couple of times as a favor to Patty.”

  “He’s not on my files,” Jeffrey said, meaning Chip had never been busted by Grant County police.

  “No, this was over in Catoogah.” Buddy shifted in his seat. “He’s not a bad guy, I have to say. Local boy, never been more than fifty miles from home. He’s just stupid. Most of ’em are just stupid. Mix that with boredom and—”

  “What about Abigail Bennett?” Jeffrey interrupted.

  “Never heard of her. She work at the club?”

  “She’s the girl we found buried in the woods.”

  Buddy shuddered, like someone had walked over his grave. “Jesus, that’s a horrible way to die. My daddy used to scare us when we’d go visit his mama at the cemetery. There was this preacher buried two plots over with a wire coming out of the dirt and going up to a telephone poll. Daddy told us they had a phone inside the coffin so he could call them in case he wasn’t really dead.” He chuckled. “One time, my mama brought a bell, one’a them bicycle bells, and we were all just standing around Granny’s plot, trying to look solemn. She rang that bell and I liked to shit in my pants.”

  Jeffrey allowed a smile.

  Buddy sighed. “You don’t have me in here to tell old stories. What do you want from Patty?”

  “We want to know what her connection is to Chip.”

  “I can tell you that,” he said. “She had a crush on him. He wouldn’t give her the time of day, but she was into him something horrible.”

  “Chip knows Abigail Bennett.”

  “How?”

  “That’s what we’d like to know,” Jeffrey said. “We were hoping Patty could tell us.”

  Buddy licked his lips. Lena could see where this was going. “I hate to say this, Chief, but I don’t hold any sway with her.”

  “We could work a deal,” Jeffrey offered.

  “No,” he said, holding up his hand. “I’m not playing you. She hates my guts. Blames me for taking her mama from her, blames me for kicking her out of the house. I’m the bad guy here.”

  Lena suggested, “Maybe she doesn’t hate you as much as she hates being in jail.”

  “Maybe.” Buddy shrugged.

  “So,” Jeffrey said, obviously not pleased, “we let her sweat it out another day?”

  “I think that’d be best,” Buddy agreed. “I hate to sound hard about this, but she needs something more than common sense to persuade her.” His lawyer side must have kicked in, because he quickly added, “And of course, we’ll expect the assault and obstruction charges to disappear in exchange for her statement.”

  Lena couldn’t help but grunt in disgust. “This is why people hate lawyers.”

  “Didn’t seem to bother you when my services were needed,” Buddy pointed out cheerfully. Then, to Jeffrey, “Chief?”

  Jeffrey sat back in his chair, his fingers steeple
d together. “She talks tomorrow morning or all bets are off.”

  “Deal,” Buddy said, shooting out his hand so they could shake on it. “Give me a few minutes alone with her now. I’ll try to paint the picture for her nice and pretty.”

  Jeffrey picked up the phone. “Brad? I need you to take Buddy back to talk to Patty O’Ryan.” He slipped the receiver back in the cradle. “He’s waiting in lockup.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Buddy said, using his cane to stand. He gave Lena a wink before making his exit.

  “Asshole,” she said.

  “He’s just doing his job,” Jeffrey told her, but she could see he felt the same. Jeffrey dealt with Buddy Conford on pretty much a weekly basis, and it usually worked to his benefit to cut deals, but Lena thought that O’Ryan would eventually talk on her own without any backdoor negotiations to save her ass from two years in prison. Not to mention Lena would’ve liked to have been consulted on whether or not to give the bitch a free pass, considering she was the officer who had been assaulted.

  Jeffrey was looking out into the parking lot. He said, “I told Dale Stanley to send his wife here first thing.”

  “You think she’ll come?”

  “Who the fuck knows.” He sat back, breathing a sigh. “I want to talk to the family again.”

  “They’re supposed to come tomorrow.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “You think Lev will let you hook him up to a lie detector?”

  “It’d tell us a hell of a lot either way,” he said, looking out the window again. “There she is.”

  Lena followed his gaze as he stood, catching a small woman getting out of a classic Dodge. She had one kid in tow and another on her hip. A tall man walked beside her as they headed toward the station.

  “She looks familiar.”

  “Police picnic,” Jeffrey said, slipping on his jacket. “You mind keeping Dale busy?”

  “Uh,” Lena began, caught off guard by his suggestion. They usually did interviews together. “No,” she said. “No problem.”

  “She might open up more without him around,” Jeffrey explained. “He likes to talk.”

  “No problem,” Lena repeated.

  At the front desk, Marla squealed at the sight of the children, and she leapt up as she buzzed open the door, going straight to the baby on the mother’s hip.

  “Look at those adorable cheeks!” Marla screeched, her voice shrill enough to shatter glass. She pinched the baby’s cheeks, and instead of crying, the kid laughed. Marla took him in her arms like she was his long-lost grandmother, stepping back out of the way. Lena felt her stomach drop about six inches as she finally saw Terri Stanley.

  “Oh,” Terri said, as if the breath had been knocked out of her.

  “Thanks for coming in,” Jeffrey told them, shaking Dale’s hand. “This is Lena Adams . . .” His voice trailed off, and Lena forced herself to close her mouth, which had opened a couple of inches at the sight of Terri. Jeffrey looked at Lena, then Terri, saying, “Y’all remember each other from the picnic last year?”

  Terri spoke—at least her mouth moved—but Lena could not hear what she said over the rush of blood pounding in her ears. Jeffrey need not have bothered with an introduction. Lena knew exactly who Terri Stanley was. The other woman was shorter than Lena and at least twenty pounds lighter. Her hair was pinned up into an old lady’s bun though she was barely out of her twenties. Her lips were pale, almost blue, and her eyes showed a flash of fear that seemed to mimic Lena’s own. Lena had seen that fear before, a little over a week ago as she had waited for her name to be called so that she could leave the waiting room of the clinic.

  Lena actually stuttered. “I-I . . .” She stopped, trying to calm herself.

  Jeffrey was watching them both closely. Without warning, he changed his earlier strategy, saying, “Terri, do you mind if Lena asks you some questions?” Dale seemed about to protest, but Jeffrey asked, “Mind if I get another look at that Dart? She sure is sweet.”

  Dale didn’t seem to like the suggestion, and Lena could see him trying to work out an excuse. He finally relented, picking up the toddler standing beside him. “All right.”

  “We’ll be back in a minute,” Jeffrey told Lena, giving her a meaningful look. He’d want an explanation, but Lena was at a loss for a story that did not incriminate herself.

  Marla offered, “I’ll take care of this one,” holding up the baby, making him squeal.

  Lena said, “We can talk in Jeffrey’s office.”

  Terri only nodded. Lena could see a thin gold chain around her neck, a tiny cross hanging at the center. Terri picked at it, her fingers brushing the cross like a talisman. She looked as terrified as Lena felt.

  “This way,” Lena said. She moved first, straining to hear Terri’s shuffling footsteps behind her as she walked toward Jeffrey’s office. The squad room was almost empty, only a few cops in from patrol to fill out paperwork or just get in from the cold. Lena felt sweat pouring down her back by the time she got to Jeffrey’s office. The walk had been one of the longest of her life.

  Terri did not speak until Lena closed the door. “You were at the clinic.”

  Lena kept her back to the woman, looking out the window at Jeffrey and Dale as they walked around the car.

  “I know it was you,” Terri said, her voice tight in her throat.

  “Yeah,” Lena admitted, turning around. Terri was sitting in one of the chairs opposite Jeffrey’s desk, her hands gripping the arms as if she could pull them off.

  “Terri—”

  “Dale will kill me if he finds out.” She said this with such conviction that Lena had no doubt Dale would do it.

  “He won’t hear it from me.”

  “Who will he hear it from?” She was obviously terrified, and Lena felt her own panic drain away when she realized that they were both bound by their secret. Terri had seen her at the clinic, but Lena had seen Terri, too.

  “He’ll kill me,” she repeated, her thin shoulders shaking.

  “I won’t tell him,” Lena repeated, thinking she was stating the obvious.

  “You damn well better not,” Terri snapped. The words were meant as a threat, but she lacked the conviction to carry it off. She was almost panting for breath. Tears were in her eyes.

  Lena sat down in the chair beside her. “What are you afraid of?”

  “You did it, too,” she insisted, her voice catching. “You’re just as guilty as me. You murdered . . . you killed your . . . you killed . . .”

  Again, Lena found her mouth moving but no words coming out.

  Terri spat, “I may be going to hell for what I did, but don’t forget I can take you with me.”

  “I know,” Lena said. “Terri, I’m not going to tell anybody.”

  “Oh, God,” she said, clutching her fist to her chest. “Please don’t tell him.”

  “I promise,” Lena vowed, feeling pity take over. “Terri, it’s okay.”

  “He won’t understand.”

  “I won’t tell,” she repeated, putting her hand over Terri’s.

  “It’s so hard,” she said, grabbing Lena’s hand. “It’s so hard.”

  Lena felt tears in her eyes, and she clenched her jaw, fighting the urge to let herself go. “Terri,” she began. “Terri, calm down. You’re safe here. I won’t tell.”

  “I felt it . . .” she began, holding her stomach. “I felt it moving inside. I felt it kicking. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t have another one. I couldn’t take . . . I can’t . . . I’m not strong enough . . . I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take it . . .”

  “Shh,” Lena hushed, smoothing back a wisp of hair that had fallen into Terri’s eyes. The woman looked so young, almost like a teenager. For the first time in years, Lena felt the urge to comfort someone. She had been on the receiving end for so long that she had almost forgotten how to offer help. “Look at me,” she said, steeling herself, fighting her own emotions. “You’re safe, Terri. I won’t tell. I won’t t
ell anyone.”

  “I’m such a bad person,” Terri said. “I’m so bad.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I can’t get clean,” she confessed. “No matter how much I bathe, I can’t get clean.”

  “I know,” Lena said, feeling a weight lifting off her chest as she admitted this. “I know.”

  “I smell it on me,” she said. “The anesthesia. The chemicals.”

  “I know,” Lena said, fighting the urge to slip back into her grief. “Be strong, Terri. You have to be strong.”

  She nodded. Her shoulders were so slumped, she looked as if she might fold in on herself. “He’ll never forgive me for this.”

  Lena didn’t know if she meant her husband or some higher power, but she nodded her head in agreement.

  “He’ll never forgive me.”

  Lena chanced a look outside the window. Dale was standing at the car but Jeffrey was to the side, talking to Sara Linton. He looked back at the station, throwing his hand out into the air as if he was angry. Sara said something, then Jeffrey nodded, taking what looked like an evidence bag from her. He walked back toward the station.

  “Terri,” Lena said, feeling the threat of Jeffrey’s arrival breathing down her neck. “Listen,” she began. “Dry your eyes. Look at me.” Terri looked up. “You’re okay,” Lena said, more like an order than a question.

  Terri nodded.

  “You have to be okay, Terri.” The woman nodded again, understanding Lena’s urgency.

  She saw Jeffrey in the squad room. He stopped to say something to Marla. “He’s coming,” she said, and Terri squared her shoulders, straightening up as if she were an actor taking a cue.

  Jeffrey knocked on the door as he came into the office. He was obviously disturbed about something, but he held it back. The evidence bag Sara had given him in the parking lot was sticking out of his pocket, but Lena could not tell what it contained. He raised his eyebrows at her, a silent question, and she felt a lurch in her stomach as she realized she hadn’t done the one thing he had told her to do.

  Without pausing a beat, Lena lied. “Terri says she’s never seen anyone at the garage but Dale.”