Broken

  Jason opened up the Yahoo account he used for porn and pasted the contact address into the email. He spoke aloud as he wrote, “I don’t know if you are the right person to talk to about this, but there is something seriously wrong going on at your Grant County …” Jason’s voice trailed off as he searched for the right word. Was it a site? A location? Facility?

  “Hey.”

  Jason jerked up his head, surprised. “You scared the crap out of me.” He fumbled for the mouse to close the browser.

  “You all right?”

  Jason glanced nervously at the computer. “What are you doing here?” The stupid email program was asking if he wanted to save. Jason moved the mouse again to minimize the page. It still asked if he wanted to save.

  “What are you writing?”

  “School stuff.” Instead of hitting Save, Jason pressed the Delete key. The program closed down. He could hear the laptop’s fan clicking, trying to cool the processor enough to complete the request. His dissertation flashed up, then disappeared. The screen went black.

  “Shit,” he whispered. “No, no, no …”

  “Jason.”

  “Just give me a minute.” Jason tapped the space bar, trying to wake the computer. Sometimes that’s all it took. Sometimes, it just needed to know he was paying attention.

  “You asked for this.”

  “Wha—” Jason pitched forward, his jaw snapping shut as his face slammed into his computer. The plastic was hot against his cheek. Dark liquid pooled around the keys. He had the crazy thought that the computer was injured, bleeding.

  Wind gusted in from the open window. Jason tried to cough. His throat wouldn’t comply. He coughed again. Something wet and thick came out of his mouth. He stared at it, thinking it looked like a piece of pork. Pink flesh. Raw meat.

  Jason gagged.

  He was staring at his tongue.

  CHAPTER NINE

  WILL FELT LIKE A THIEF AS HE SNEAKED ACROSS THE LINTON YARD and climbed into his Porsche. At least the driving rain gave him an excuse to keep his head down and move quickly. He jammed the key in the lock and was inside the car before he realized there was something trapped under his windshield wiper. Will groaned. He pushed open the door and tried to reach around to the wiper, but his arm wasn’t long enough. His sleeve was nearly soaked through by the time he got out of the car again to retrieve the plastic sandwich bag.

  Someone had left him a note. The paper was folded in two, safe inside the plastic. Will glanced around, trying to see up and down the street. No one was milling about, which was unsurprising, considering the awful weather. There were no parked cars with the engines running. Will unzipped the bag. He caught a whiff of a familiar scent.

  Fancy soap.

  He stared at the folded piece of paper, wondering if Sara was playing some kind of joke. He’d paced the floor of her family’s romper room half the night, replaying in his mind the last five minutes of their conversation. She hadn’t said anything, really. Or had she? There was definitely a look in her eyes. Something had changed between them, and it wasn’t a good change.

  Other than Will’s wife, there were only two people in his life who knew about his dyslexia. Both of them had found their own special ways to make him miserable about it. Amanda Wagner, his boss, threw out occasional bon mots about him being professionally incompetent at best and mentally incapacitated at worst. Faith was more well-meaning, but she was too nosy for her own good. Once, she’d peppered Will with so many questions about the disorder that he’d stopped talking to her for two whole days.

  His wife, Angie, was a combination of both responses. She had grown up with Will, helped him write school assignments and work on papers and fill out applications. She’d been the one who reviewed his reports and made sure he didn’t sound like a backward chimp. She was also prone to dangling her help in exchange for things she wanted. And they were never good things. At least not good for Will.

  In their own way, all three women made it clear that they thought something was wrong with him. Something not quite right with his head. With the way he thought. With the way he handled things. They didn’t pity him. He was pretty sure Amanda didn’t even like him. But they treated him differently. They treated him like he had a disease.

  What would Sara do? Maybe nothing. Will wasn’t even sure if she had figured it out. Or he could just be fooling himself. Sara was smart—that was part of the problem. She was a hell of a lot smarter than Will. Had he tripped up? Did she have some kind of special doctor’s tool to trap unsuspecting morons? He must have said something or done something that had given himself away. But what?

  Will glanced back at the Linton home to make sure no one was watching him. Sara had developed a weird habit of lurking behind closed doors. He unfolded the notebook paper. There was a smiley face at the bottom.

  Did she think he was a child? Was she out of gold stars?

  He pressed his fingers to his eyes, feeling like an idiot. There was nothing sexy about a barely literate thirty-five-year-old man.

  He looked back at the note.

  Thankfully, Sara didn’t write in cursive. She didn’t write like a doctor, either. Will put his finger under each letter, moving his lips as he read. “Fun …” His heart did a weird double beat in his chest, but quickly he realized his mistake. “Funeral.” He knew the next word, and numbers had never been a problem for him.

  He stared back at the front door. The window was clear. He checked the note again. “Funeral home 11:30.”

  And a smiley face, because apparently she thought he was intellectually disabled.

  Will stuck his key into the ignition. Obviously, she was talking about the time for the autopsies. But was this also some kind of test to see how well he could read? The thought of Sara Linton examining him like a lab rat made him want to pack his bags and move to Honduras. She would feel sorry for him. Worse, she might try to help him.

  “Hello?”

  Will jumped so hard he slammed his head into the ceiling. Cathy Linton was standing outside his car with a pleasant look on her face. She had a large umbrella over her head. She motioned for him to roll down the window.

  “Good morning, Mr. Trent.” She was all smiles again, but he had fallen for her sweet-southern-lady crap once before.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Linton.”

  Her breath was visible in the cold. “I hope you slept well.”

  He looked back at the house, wondering why this was the only time Sara wasn’t lurking behind the door. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

  “I just went for my walk. Exercise is the best way to start the morning.” She smiled again. “Won’t you come in and have some breakfast with us?”

  His stomach rumbled so loudly he was sure the car was shaking. The energy bar he’d found at the bottom of his suitcase this morning hadn’t exactly hit the spot. A woman like Cathy Linton would know how to make a good biscuit. There would be butter and ham. Probably grits. Eggs. Sausage patties. It was like she was inviting him into the woods to visit her cottage made of candy.

  “Mr. Trent?”

  “No, ma’am. I need to get to work, but I appreciate it.”

  “Dinner, then.” She had a way of saying things that sounded like a suggestion at first but ended up being a strict order. “I hope the apartment wasn’t too horrible last night.”

  “No, ma’am. It was fine.”

  “I’ll just slip up there later and do some dusting. Eddie and I haven’t used the place since the girls were here. I cringe to think of the state it must be in.”

  Will thought about the dirty clothes he’d left piled on the couch. He’d packed in Atlanta thinking he’d wash everything at the hotel. “That’s all right. I—”

  “Nonsense.” She tapped her hand on the car door like a judge passing down an edict. “I can’t have you breathing in all that dust.”

  He knew there was no way to stop her. “Just … uh … Just ignore my mess. Please. I’m sorry.”

  Her smile changed to so
mething much kinder than he’d seen before. He could see now where Sara got her beauty. Cathy reached into the car and gently rested her hand on his arm. Sara had touched him on the arm a lot last night. They were obviously a touchy-feely kind of family, which was just as foreign to Will as if they were from Mars.

  She squeezed his arm. “Dinner’s at seven-thirty sharp.”

  He nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t be late.” Her smile changed back to the one he was more familiar with. She winked at him before turning on her heel and walking back toward the house.

  Will rolled up his window. He put the car in gear and headed up the road, too late remembering that he was going in the wrong direction. Or maybe not. Sara had told him that Lakeshore was just a big circle. Will had lately gone around in enough circles to last a lifetime, but he wasn’t going to risk driving past the Linton home again.

  The road was empty, he assumed because of the early hour. Will was timing his arrival at the police station so that he’d get there before most of the cops came on shift. He wanted to look eager and alert. He wanted them to feel like he was stepping on their toes.

  He slowed his car as he rounded a curve. The road was more like a stream, rainwater flooding across the asphalt. He maneuvered the Porsche into the opposite side of the street to keep his floorboards from flooding. Will had spent ten years of his life and a chunk of his savings restoring the 9-11 by hand. Most of that time, he was bent over manuals and schematics, trying to figure out how the car was supposed to work. He’d learned to weld. He’d learned to do body work. He’d learned that he wasn’t particularly fond of either.

  The engine was solid, but the gears were temperamental. He felt the clutch slip as he downshifted. Once he was out of the floodwaters, he idled the car, thinking he’d let the undercarriage drain, wondering if such a thing was even possible. Up ahead, a blue mailbox with an Auburn University logo painted on it rocked in the strong wind. He recalled the first house number Sara had written on the outside of the folder when she was giving him directions to her parents’ house. Will had always been good at remembering numbers.

  In Atlanta, Sara lived in the old dairy factory, one of those industrial complexes that had been turned into luxurious lofts back during the real estate boom. He’d remarked then that the place didn’t really seem like her type of home. The lines were too hard. The furniture too sleek. He had imagined she lived somewhere warm and welcoming, more like a cottage.

  He had been right.

  The Auburn mailbox belonged to a shotgun-style, one-story home with plants overflowing in the front yard. Sara had lived on the lake, and the sky was just light enough so that Will could see the glorious aspect of her backyard. He wondered what Sara’s life had been like when she lived here. She didn’t strike him as the kind of wife who would have dinner and a dry martini waiting when her husband got home, but maybe occasionally she had filled the role out of kindness. There was something about her that indicated a tremendous capacity for love.

  The porch light came on. Will put the car in gear and continued around the lake. He missed the turnoff for Main Street and had to back up. He felt his wedding ring on his hand, making a mental note that the turn would be on that side. Over the years, he had trained his mind to recognize his watch, not the ring. Probably because the watch was more permanent.

  Will had met Angie Polaski when he was eight years old. Angie was three years older, thrown into the system because her mother had overdosed on a nasty combination of heroin and speed. While Diedre Polaski lay comatose in the bathroom, Angie was being looked after by her mother’s pimp in the bedroom. Finally, someone had called the police. Diedre was put on life support at the state hospital, where she remained to this day, and Angie was sent to the Atlanta Children’s Home for the remaining seven years of a childhood that had already been lost. Will had fallen in love with her on sight. At eleven, she’d had a chip on her shoulder and hell in her eyes. When she wasn’t giving boys handjobs in the coat closet, she was beating the snot out of them with her unsurprisingly quick fists.

  Will had loved her for her fierceness, and when her fierceness had worn him down, he had clung to her for her familiarity. Last year, she had married him on a dare after years of empty promises. She cheated on him. She pushed him to the breaking point, then sank her claws into his flesh and yanked him back. His relationship with Angie was more akin to a twisted hokey pokey. She was in Will’s life. She was out. She was in. She was shaking him all about.

  Will found Main Street after a couple of wrong turns. The rain wasn’t coming down in sheets anymore, so he could make out the small shops lining the road. One place was obviously a hardware store. The other looked like a shop to buy ladies’ clothing. Directly across from the station was a dry cleaners. Will thought about his dirty laundry piled on the couch. Maybe he could find time to sneak back and get it. He usually wore a suit and tie to work, but he hadn’t had a lot of options this morning. There was just one T-shirt and a pair of boxers left. His jeans were clean enough to last another day. The sweater was the one he wore last night. The cashmere blend hadn’t responded well to the rain. He felt the material tighten every time he flexed his shoulders.

  Will pulled into the farthest space from the front door, backing in so that the Porsche was facing the street. Catty-corner to the station, he saw a low office building with glass brick on the front. The faded sign out front had a teddy bear holding some balloons. Probably a daycare center. A squad car rolled down the street but didn’t stop, going ahead through the gates of what must have been the college. Will’s was the only car in the lot. He supposed Larry Knox was inside the station, or maybe they’d given him a relief when Will left last night. Either way, he wasn’t going to spend the next twenty minutes standing in the rain outside the locked door.

  He dialed Amanda Wagner’s number, holding out slim hope that she wasn’t in the office yet.

  His luck took a nasty turn. Amanda answered the phone herself.

  “It’s Will,” he said. “I’m outside the station house.”

  Amanda never gave anyone the benefit of the doubt, not least of all Will. “Did you just get there?”

  “I got in last night.” He felt a slight bit of relief. In the back of his mind, he’d been worried that Sara would call Amanda and ask that Will be taken off the case. She would want the best the GBI had to offer, not a functional illiterate with a suitcase full of dirty laundry.

  Amanda’s tone was clipped. “Run it down for me, Will. I haven’t got all day.”

  He told her Sara’s story: that she had gotten a call from Julie Smith, then Frank Wallace. That she had gone to the jail and found Tommy Braham dead. He didn’t tell her about Sara’s beef with Lena Adams, instead skipping ahead to the Cross pens that Jeffrey Tolliver had given his staff. “I’m pretty sure the ink cartridge Braham used came from one of those pens.”

  “Good luck finding out whose.” Amanda picked at the same thread Will had spotted. “There’s no way of knowing exactly when Tommy Braham died—before or after Frank Wallace called Sara.”

  “We’ll see what the autopsy brings. Dr. Linton is going to do it.”

  “There’s a bright spot in a bleak day.”

  “It’s good to have someone down here who knows what they’re doing.”

  “Shouldn’t that be you, Will?”

  He let the remark go unanswered.

  She asked, “What’s your impression on the Allison Spooner homicide?”

  “I’m fifty-fifty. Maybe Tommy Braham did it. Or maybe her killer’s assuming he got away with murder.”

  “Well, figure it out and get back here fast, because they’re not going to like you very much if you prove he’s innocent.”

  She was right. One thing cops hated more than bad guys was being proven wrong about the bad guys. Will had seen an Atlanta detective nearly go into convulsions as he argued that the DNA exonerating his suspect had to be wrong.

  Amanda told him, “I called Macon General t
his morning. Brad Stephens had to be taken back into surgery. They missed a bleeder the first time.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “Prognosis is guarded. They’re keeping him sedated for the time being, so he’s not going to talk to anyone anytime soon.”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s not going to remember anything useful except that his fellow officers saved his life.”

  “Be that as it may, he’s still a cop. You need to go over there at some point and share in the camaraderie. Donate some blood. Buy him a magazine.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What’s your game plan?”

  “I’m going to rattle some cages this morning and see if anything falls out. Faith is working on the paper trail for Julie Smith and Carl Phillips. Talking to them is my priority, but we’ve got to find them first. I want to check out the lake where Spooner was found, then go see the garage where she lived. It feels like her murder is at the center of this. Whatever they’re hiding from me goes back to her death.”

  “You don’t think they’re tap-dancing because of the suicide?”

  “They might be, but my gut is telling me something else is going on.”

  “Ah, your famous women’s intuition.” Amanda never missed an opportunity to insult him. “What about Adams?”

  “I’ll keep her close by.”

  “I met her once. She’ll be a hard nut to crack.”

  “So I hear.”

  “Loop me in at the end of the day.”

  She hung up the phone before Will could respond. He rubbed his fingers through his hair, wondering if the damp was from the rain or his own sweat.

  For the second time that morning, Will jumped when someone knocked on the window of his car. This time the knocker was an older black man, and he stood at the passenger door, grinning at Will’s reaction. He made a rolling motion with his arm. Will leaned over and opened the door.