Cop Town (30 page)

“Kate.” Maggie forced an authority into her tone that she did not feel. “Kate, get up. Now.”

She sat up quickly, panicked. She looked at Sir Chic. She looked at Anthony. She looked at Gail. Her mouth opened, but only a squeak came out.

Maggie said, “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

Kate couldn’t take her eyes off the knife. She knew it was bad. That she didn’t say so was a minor miracle.

“Fuck me,” Gail whispered. The panic was taking over. The muscles in her neck stood out like rope as she fought to keep her head from moving. “It’s bad. I know it’s bad.”

“You’re gonna be—” Maggie’s voice caught. She wasn’t going to be all right. None of this was all right.

“Don’t.” Gail’s voice was shallow. “Don’t you goddamn cry, Lawson.”

“I’m not,” Maggie lied. “I won’t.”

“Both of you. I’ll take out this knife and stab you myself. You hear me?”

“All right.” Kate had no idea what she was agreeing to. Her pupils were so blown open that she looked stoned.

Maggie tightened her grip on Gail’s hand. She willed her tears to stop. She had to keep her promise. The ambulance crew, the responding officers, whoever was on their way—she couldn’t let them see her cry. They had to be tough gals. They had to be stronger than everybody else.

Maggie looked up at the ceiling. She took a deep breath and slowly let it go. Her eyes could not find a spot to rest on. She didn’t want to see Gail or Kate. She didn’t want to see the two dead men whose bodies were already giving off the metallic odor of congealing blood.

She looked out the broken window at the abandoned storage building across the street.

The flapping piece of tar paper was gone.

20

Fox passed the pimped-out Mercury as he walked away from the scene. He plucked Kate’s hat from the back seat, leaving Jimmy Lawson’s for the rest of her shift.

Flowers.

He knew that Kate’s hair would smell like flowers. Not like perfume, but the real thing that grew out of the ground.

Fox let himself consider what it would be like to feel her skin. To bite her with his teeth. To screw her into the ground. To one by one pluck away her petals. To cut himself on her thorns.

He always felt this way after a kill—not satisfied, but craving more. He owed Kate Murphy. She had led him here. Not that Fox didn’t keep his ear to the ground. The police scanner had been filled with chatter since Don Wesley had been taken out. Nobody gave a shit when Fox was killing drug dealers and street scum. Put down a couple of cops, and that got their attention, even if they were the kind of cops who deserved to die.

Still, Fox was getting tired of surprises.

And he was getting tired of correcting his own past mistakes.

Fox had been halfway home when he’d decided he needed to walk the alley where Jimmy and Don Wesley had been going at it. Leaving a kill scene like that was lazy, and Fox was not lazy.

Lesson eight: Always follow the plan.

This was how it happened: You stuck your gun in their face. You made them call dispatch and clock out. You unplugged their radios so they couldn’t call for help. You put them on their knees. You made them lace their fingers together and put them on the top of their heads. You pulled the trigger.

Pop.

Pop.

Two men. Two bodies. Two more names off the list.

And then you always checked the scene to make sure you hadn’t left anything for the good guys to find.

By the time Fox got back to the alley, the spunk and blood were already drying on the ground. Grid search, just like they used to do for land mines. Fox had paced back and forth and found nothing but the shit you could find on every street in the city.

He now accepted that someone had been there before him. The pimp, obviously. He had a police transmitter in his hand. Jimmy Lawson’s transmitter. No whore would’ve given up that kind of bargaining chip. All any slit ever cared about was sucking cock and stealing some poor guy’s money.

The pimp wasn’t a nuisance. He was a witness.

Lucky thing Fox had his rifle.

The bullet had clipped Kate’s ear because Fox had told it to. He could taste the blood in his mouth when it happened.

Kate’s blood.

Fox licked his lips. The cold wind dried them quickly. He didn’t need wind; he needed lightning. The plan wasn’t coming together like he wanted. The thing in the back of his head wasn’t talking to the front.
And the thing between his legs was yelling that it was tired of waiting. Fox was patient, but he wasn’t a saint. Tomorrow, all of this had to come together or something really bad was going to happen.

He heard a police siren blaring up the street. They were coming faster than Fox had anticipated. No choice but to duck into an alley. Fox wasn’t worried about witnesses in this neighborhood. He was a white man with a cop’s hat in his hand and a sniper’s rifle slung over his shoulder.

Nawsir-Officer-sir, I didn’t see a thing
.

The police cruiser zoomed past the alley. Fox’s car was parked behind the next row of houses. He knew a back way out. Fox always knew a back way out.

He allowed himself a smile. The ground shook beneath his feet. The trains were rumbling through the Howell Wye.

Trains
.

The lightning finally struck Fox’s skull. The plan jolted from the back to the front. He saw it now, a living, breathing plan that he could hold in his hand and study from all angles. It was complicated, but brilliant.

And like everything else that had happened this week, it all started with Jimmy Lawson.

21

“You’re quitting.” Terry drove with one hand and smoked with the other. “I’m not playing, missy. Tomorrow. Your resignation on Vick’s desk before roll call.”

Maggie said nothing. She had her eyes closed. Her jaw was ratcheted down so tight that she could taste the silver fillings in her teeth.

“Fucking Patterson,” Terry muttered. “What’re you doin’ goin’ with that crazy slit anyway? You’re not a fucking detective. None of you are.”

The taste of blood mixed with the metal. She had cut her cheek in the Portuguese house. Maggie couldn’t recall when. The edge of her molars had sliced open the skin like a knife.

A knife
.

“You listenin’ to me?” Terry slapped her face. “Open your goddamn eyes.”

Maggie opened her eyes. She stared straight ahead. The car’s headlights furrowed through the darkness.

“Un-fuckin’-believable.” Terry continued to berate her. She continued to ignore him.

They wouldn’t let Maggie stay at the hospital. Trouble had asked her to stay. Maggie had said she would stay. Terry had dragged her out by her collar in front of the whole squad.

Gail wouldn’t even know she had been there. She was still in surgery. She would never see out of her eye again. That’s what the doctors had said. They’d also said she might have brain damage, but what did they know? Gail was joking even before the morphine. She had the paramedics cracking up. They had given her a cigarette and she’d made some comment about the smoke coming out of her eyeball.

Maggie smiled. They used to joke all the time back when they rode together. Gail would tell her stories about old busts, like the bank robber who jumped on the counter, hit his head, and knocked himself out. Or the idiot who was trying to rob a liquor store and ended up shooting off his own hand. Riding alongside Gail, Maggie hadn’t just learned how to be a cop. She had learned how to be in charge. For the first time in her life, she had power. People had to stop when she told them to. They had to listen to what she said. They didn’t get to argue or talk over her or tell her she was wrong. Or if they did, Maggie wrote down every single word they said in her arrest report so the prosecutor could use it.

And Gail would say, “Keep on talkin’, motherfucker. We got more pens.”

That would never happen again. Gail couldn’t be a cop anymore. She couldn’t pass the physical readiness test with one eye. She couldn’t work the streets or bang up the bad guys. Anthony hadn’t just taken away her vision with that knife. He’d taken away her power.

Maybe that’s why Maggie could feel no remorse for her actions. She had murdered a man. She had taken a life.

An eye for an eye
.

“Hey, idiot!” Terry snapped his fingers in front of her face. “I asked you a question.”

Maggie didn’t care about his questions. She had answered them all at the scene. She’d told Cal Vick what had happened to the best of her recollection. Not that she trusted her recollections. What happened in the Portuguese house felt so distant to her that Maggie had a hard time believing
that she’d actually been there. It was like hearing stories about things she’d done as a child. Maggie didn’t really remember the events firsthand. She remembered the stories because she’d heard them so many times. When she was three and she opened all of Jimmy’s Christmas presents. When she was five and cut her leg on a rusty nail.

Maggie flattened her palm to her leg. The ridges of the scar were as familiar as her reflection. She knew the story behind the injury, but the pain and the panic and the fear that had likely gone along with it were completely lost.

Terry turned the steering wheel so hard that Maggie had to brace herself to keep from falling. He sped down the driveway and screeched to a stop under the carport. “Where’s your brother?”

Maggie opened the door. She didn’t know where Jimmy was. His car wasn’t on the street. Back at the Portuguese house, she kept expecting to see him. Her heart lurched every time a new person came into the room. And then she would realize it wasn’t Jimmy and a cold wave of disappointment washed over.

Maggie walked up the steps to the kitchen. Delia’s back was to Maggie. The ashtray overflowed with cigarettes smoked down to the filters.

Maggie put her belt on the counter. “Mama.”

Delia didn’t turn around. “You’re quitting tomorrow.”

Maggie felt surprised, and then she felt stupid for being surprised.

“I mean it, Margaret.” Delia turned around. Her eyes were red. She looked a hundred years old. “You’ll work with me at the diner. You’ll get an office job. You’ll drive a damn tow truck. I don’t care. You’re not going back to that job.”

Terry said, “That’s exactly what I told her.” He wasn’t a big man, but his presence sucked the remaining air out of the kitchen. “Where’s Jimmy?”

“He’s not with you?” Delia called up the stairs, “Jimmy?” She waited a second, then called louder. “Jimmy!”

Lilly yelled back, “He’s locked in his room!”

“Locked in his room?” Terry mumbled. “What the hell’s wrong with him?”

“How the hell should I know?” Delia demanded. “None of my children give a shit about me.”

Terry went up the stairs. His bad mood lingered.

“I mean it, Margaret.” Delia’s voice was a quiet threat. “No more playing cops and robbers.”

Even if Maggie had wanted to respond, she couldn’t unclench her jaw.

“You killed a man. Murdered him.”

Maggie stopped breathing.

“There’s blood all over your clothes. On your face. Gail got hurt. She’s your friend. I know she’s your friend. And look what happened to her. She’s handicapped for the rest of her life.” Her voice trilled. “Her
life
, Margaret. It’s gone.”

Maggie forced herself not to look away.

“What’s going to happen to her?” Delia answered the question herself. “She’ll lose her job. She won’t be able to find another one. Her husband will leave her. What man wants to be with a woman like that? To have to take care of her for the rest of her life?”

Maggie swallowed hard.

“It could’ve just as easily been you. Did you consider that? That I might be stuck here taking care of you until I die? And then what? Your brother Jimmy has to take care of you? Or Lilly, God help her?” She clutched the counter with her hand. “Are you just going to stand there staring like an imbecile?”

Maggie found her voice. “It didn’t happen to me.”

“But look what did!” Delia’s anger erupted. “You’re a murderer now. Is that what you want to be? A murderer? With blood on your hands?” She grabbed Maggie’s arm. “Answer me!”

Maggie looked down at her mother’s hand. The fingertips were stained yellow from nicotine. She told her mother, “The only regret I have is that I didn’t murder him sooner.”

Delia staggered back. She could have been looking at a stranger.

Maggie opened the cabinet under the sink. She grabbed a paper bag from the pile.

“What are you doing?”

“Cleaning up Terry and Jimmy’s mess.” She clutched the bag between her hands. “Isn’t that what you want me to do, Mother? Stay here for the rest of my life and clean up everybody’s fucking mess?”

Maggie walked out the door. The night air was frigid. She didn’t bother to turn on the lights under the carport. Her father had installed the fixtures the last time he was out of the hospital. Most of the time, the bulbs flickered like a mirror ball. The kitchen light offered little illumination. For some reason, Maggie wanted to be in the shadows.

Seven hours ago, Terry had thrown a can of beer at her head. Maggie picked it up now. Warm liquid sloshed onto her hand. She dropped the can into the bag. She picked up another can, then another. She didn’t intend to count, but she was on fifteen by the time she made her way to the side yard.

Maggie couldn’t see where she was going. She stepped on a can. The aluminum cupped around the arch of her shoe. She used her other foot to pry it off. Then she squatted on the ground and resumed picking up cans.

Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen
.

The bag was overflowing. Instead of going back to the kitchen, Maggie walked across the yard.

Lee Grant’s van was in the driveway. She could make out the gold, yellow, and blue bands, the Southern Bell logo on the side. Maggie pressed her hand to the hood. The engine was cold.

She went up the two steps to the side entrance and knocked on the door. And then she rang the doorbell, because she wasn’t sure what Lee could hear. She’d said maybe five words to him in the last eight years. He was nervous around Jimmy and terrified of Terry, which meant that he was a hell of a lot smarter than people gave him credit for.