Indelible (12 page)

“Sara!” Jeffrey yelled, waving her in. “Hurry!”

She jogged toward him, feeling a sharp sting in the arch of her foot as she crossed the grass. There were pine needles and cones in the yard, and she tried to step as carefully as she could without slowing down.

Jeffrey grabbed her arm and pulled her the rest of the way into the house. The layout was similar to Possum's, with a long hallway down the center and the bedrooms on the right.

“Down there,” Jeffrey said, pushing her toward the hall. He picked up the kitchen phone, telling her, “I'll call the police.”

Shock overcame Sara for a moment as she walked into the master bedroom.

The ceiling fan wobbled out of balance overhead, the blades making an awkward chopping sound. Jessie stood beside an open window, her mouth moving but no noise coming out. A shirtless man lay facedown on the floor by the bed. The right side of
his head was blown off. Streaks of blood led to a short-nosed gun that looked as if it had been kicked away from the area near his left hand.

“My God,” Sara breathed. Blood sprayed the area by the bed in a fine mist, spattering parts of the ceiling and the light on the fan. A chunk of skull and scalp was hanging from the bedside table; what looked like a section of earlobe was stuck to the front of the drawer.

Despite the horrific scene in front of her, Sara felt her medical training kick in. She went to the man, pressing her fingers against his neck, trying to find a pulse. She checked his carotids and found nothing, her fingers sticking to the skin when she pulled them away. There was a sheen of sweat on the body. The sickly sweet smell of vanilla filled the air.

“Is he dead?”

Sara spun around at the question.

Robert stood behind the bedroom door. He was partially bent over, leaning against the wall for support. His left hand covered a wound in his side, blood seeping out between his fingers. His right hand held a gun that was pointed toward the dead man.

Sara told Jessie, “Get me some towels,” but the woman did not move.

“Are you okay?” Sara asked, keeping her distance from Robert. He still held the gun at his side and there was a glassy look to his eyes, like he did not know where he was.

Jeffrey entered, assessing the scene with a quick glance. “Robert?” he said, taking a few steps toward his friend. The other man blinked, then seemed to recognize Jeffrey.

Jeffrey indicated the gun. “Why don't you give me that, man?”

His hand shook as he handed the weapon to Jeffrey muzzle first. Jeffrey engaged the safety and tucked it into the waistband of his jeans.

Sara told Robert, “I need to take off your shirt, okay?”

He looked at her with a puzzled expression. “Is he dead?”

“Why don't you sit down?” she suggested, but he shook his head, leaning back against the wall again. He was a tall man and very muscular. Even in his undershirt and boxer shorts, he looked like someone who was not used to taking orders.

Jeffrey caught Sara's eye before asking, “What happened, Bobby?”

Robert's mouth worked, as if he had difficulty speaking. “He's dead, isn't he?”

Jeffrey stood between his friend and the body. “What happened?”

Jessie spoke in a rush, pointing to the window. “Here,” she said. “He came in through here.”

Jeffrey walked along the periphery of the room, peering through the open window without touching it. He said, “The screen's off.”

Robert hissed with pain as Sara peeled back the shirt. Still, he helped her lift it over his head so she could see the full extent of the damage. He cursed between his teeth, gripping his shirt in his hand as she tentatively pressed the wound. Blood dribbled steadily from the small hole in his side into the waistband of his boxer shorts, but he put his shirt over the area to staunch the blood before Sara could properly
examine the wound. She could see an exit wound higher up in his back before he turned his body away from her. The bullet was lodged in the wall directly behind him, red pinpricks of blood forming a circle around the hole.

“Bob,” Jeffrey said, his tone sharp. “Come on, man. What happened?”

“I don't know,” Robert said, practically grinding his shirt into the wound. “He just . . .”

Jessie interrupted, “He shot Bobby.”

“He shot you?” Jeffrey repeated, obviously trying to get the story from Robert. There was a surprising underlayer of anger to his tone as he looked around the room, probably trying to reconstruct the scene in his head.

Jeffrey pointed to a bullet hole in the wall on the far side of the bed. “Is this from his gun or yours?”

“His,” Jessie said in a high-pitched voice. From the way she was acting, Sara guessed the other woman was talking loudly to try to hide the fact that she was stoned out of her mind. She swayed back and forth like a pendulum, her pupils wide enough to blind her in direct sunlight.

Jeffrey hushed Jessie with a look. “Robert, tell me what happened.”

Robert shook his head, holding his hand tightly to his wounded side.

Jeffrey demanded, “Goddammit, Robert, let's get your story straight before somebody puts it on paper.”

Sara tried to help, saying, “Just tell us what happened.”

“Bob?” Jeffrey prodded, his anger still palpable.

Sara tried to be gentle, telling Robert, “This would be easier if you sat down.”

“It'd be easier if he fucking talked,” Jeffrey yelled.

Robert looked at his wife, his mouth a straight line. He shook his head, and Sara thought she saw tears in his eyes. For her part, Jessie just stood there, slightly swaying, her robe pulled around her as if to stop a chill. She probably would not even realize how close they had both come to death until the morning.

“He came in through the window,” Robert finally told them. “He put a gun on Jess. A gun to her head.”

Jessie's expression as he said this was unreadable. Even from this distance, Sara could see that the other woman was having difficulty following the story. At Jessie's feet were several opened prescription bottles that had probably fallen from the bedside table. Blood splotched the triangular-shaped white pills. Sara could see where her footprints had smeared into the thick pile of the carpet. Jessie had run past the body on the way to the window. Sara wondered what she had been thinking. Was she trying to escape while her husband fought for his life?

Jeffrey asked, “What happened next?”

“Jessie screamed, and I pushed . . .” Robert glanced at the dead man on the floor. “I pushed him back and he fell . . . and then he shot at me—shot me—and I . . .” He stopped, trying to control the emotion that obviously wanted to come.

“There were three shots,” Sara remembered. She looked around the room, trying to reconcile what she had heard in the street with the story he told.

Robert stared at the dead man. “Are you sure he's gone?”

“Yes,” she told him, knowing that lying would serve no purpose.

“Here?” Jeffrey said, obviously trying to distract Robert from the grim truth. He pointed to the bullet hole by the bed. “He missed the first time?”

Robert made a visible swallow. Sara could see a bead of sweat roll down his neck when he answered, “Yeah.”

“He came in through the window,” Jeffrey began. “He put a gun to Jessie's head.” He looked at Jessie for confirmation, and she nodded quickly. “You pushed him off the bed and he shot at you. You got your gun then. Right?” Robert gave a curt nod, but Jeffrey was not finished. “You keep your piece where? The closet? In the drawer?” He waited, but again Robert was reluctant. “Where do you keep your piece?”

Jessie opened her mouth, but closed it when Robert pointed to the closed armoire opposite the bed, saying, “There,” before Jeffrey could repeat himself.

“You got your gun,” Jeffrey said, opening the armoire door. A shirt fell out and he replaced it on the pile. Over his shoulder, Sara could see there was a plastic-molded gun safe on the top shelf. “You keep your backup in here, too?”

He shook his head. “The living room.”

“All right.” Jeffrey rested his hand on the open door. “You went for your gun. He shot you then?”

“Yes,” Robert nodded, though he did not sound
convinced. His voice was stronger when he added, “And then I shot him.”

Jeffrey turned back to the scene, nodding his head as if he was having a conversation with himself, working everything out. He walked over to the window again and looked out. Sara watched him do all of this, shocked. Not only had Jeffrey changed the crime scene, now he was helping Robert concoct a plausible story for how this had all happened.

Jessie cleared her throat, and her voice shook when she asked Sara, “Is he going to be okay?”

Sara took a moment to realize Jessie was talking to her. She was still focused on Jeffrey, wondering what he would do next. He'd had a few minutes alone with Robert and Jessie before he called Sara into the house. What had he done during that time? What had they worked out?

“Sara?” Jessie prompted.

Sara made herself concentrate on what she could control, asking Robert, “Can I look?”

He moved his hand away from the bullet wound and Sara resumed the examination. His shirt had smeared the blood, but she thought she could make out a V-shaped sear pattern just below the opening.

She tried to wipe away the blood, but Robert put his hand back over the wound, saying, “I'm all right.”

“I should check—”

He interrupted her. “I'm fine.”

Sara tried to hold his gaze, but he looked away. She said, “Maybe you should sit down until the ambulance gets here.”

Jeffrey asked, “Is it bad?”

“It's okay,” Robert answered for her, leaning back against the wall again. He told Sara, “Thank you.”

“Sara?” Jeffrey asked.

She shrugged, not knowing what to say. In the distance, she heard the wail of a siren. Jessie crossed her arms over her chest with a shudder. Sara wanted to see that shirt, wanted to see if the material was burned in the same pattern as Robert's skin, but he held it tightly in his fist, pressing it into the wound.

Sara had been a coroner for only two years, but the type of marking she thought she had seen was textbook quality. Even a rookie cop two days on the job would know what it meant.

The gun had been fired at contact range.

11:45
A.M.

L
ena stood in the front of Burgess's Cleaners, looking across Main Street at the police station. The tinted glass door was too dark to see anything inside, but still she stared as if she could see into the building, knew exactly what was happening. Another shot had been fired thirty minutes ago. Of the two cops missing at the start of this, only Mike Dugdale had checked in. Marilyn Edwards was still missing and Frank said he thought the attractive young police officer had been in the squad room at the start of the attack. Everyone from the Grant force was walking around like the living dead. All Lena could think was that if she had gone into work a few minutes earlier, she might have been able to do something. She might have been able to save Jeffrey. Right now, she wanted to be in that building so bad that she could taste it.

She turned around, watching Nick and Frank talking by the map table. The GBI agents were milling
around the coffee machine, voices low as they waited for orders. Pat Morris talked with Molly Stoddard, and Lena wondered if Pat had been one of Sara's patients. He was young enough.

“The hell you say,” Frank told Nick, his voice loud enough to be heard over the activity. Everyone in the room looked up.

Nick indicated old man Burgess's office. “In here.”

They both went into the small, windowless room, shutting the door behind them. The tension they stirred up was still in the room, and a few people went to the back of the cleaners, probably to go outside to smoke and talk about the outburst.

Lena took out her cell phone and waited for it to power up. It chirped twice, indicating she had messages waiting. She debated who to call, Nan or Ethan. Her uncle Hank briefly entered her mind, but considering their conversation that morning during which he practically begged her to lean on his shoulder, calling him now seemed like giving in, and Lena was not about to do that. She hated the thought of needing people almost as much as she hated having to reach out to them. In the end, she turned off the phone and tucked it back into her pocket, wondering why she had turned the damn thing on in the first place.

Frank came up beside her. His breath was sour when he asked, “Tactical's on the roof?”

Lena pointed at the building by the station. “Two up there that I can see,” she said, indicating the black-clad men lying on their stomachs with high-powered rifles.

“Twenty more people from Nick's office just showed up,” he told her.

“What for?”

“Stand around with their thumbs up their asses, from what I can see.”

“Frank,” Lena began, feeling a lump rise in her throat. “Are you sure?”

“What?”

“Jeffrey,” she said, the word sticking.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” Frank said, obviously upset by the memory. He wiped his nose with his hand as he crossed his arms over his chest. “He just went down. Sara crawled over to him and . . .” He shook his head. “Next thing I know, the shooter's putting a gun to her head, telling her to move away.”

Lena chewed her lip, feeling a surprising shock of sympathy for Sara Linton.

“Nick seems to know what he's doing,” Frank said. “They just cut the power to the whole building.”

“Will the phones work without it?”

“There's a straight line to Marla's desk,” Frank said. “The Chief put it in when he came here. Never knew why until now.”

Lena nodded, trying not to think about it too much. When he had first taken the job as Chief, Jeffrey had done a lot of things that had seemed unusual at the time but ended up making perfect sense.

Frank said, “Phone company's made it so they can't call out unless it's to us.”

Lena nodded again, wondering who had known to do all of this. If it was left up to her, they would be storming the building right now, finding the
fuckers who had started all of this and finishing it by carrying out their bodies feet-first.

She put her foot on the window ledge, retying her shoe so that Frank would not see the tears welling in her eyes. She hated the fact that she could cry at the drop of a hat now. It made her feel stupid, especially because someone like Frank would take it as a weakness, when the truth was, she was crying because she was a hairsbreadth from full-out rage. How could someone do something like this? How could they come to the station, the last place Lena held as sacred, and do this kind of thing? Jeffrey had been her rudder through all of the shit that had happened to her in the last few years. How could he be taken away from her now, when she was getting her life back?

Frank muttered, “Goddamn media's already trying to get in.”

“What?” she asked, hiding a sniff.

“Media,” he said. “They're trying to get helicopters down here to film it.”

“The station's within the no-fly zone,” Lena pointed out, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. Fort Grant had been shut down under Reagan, putting thousands of locals out of their jobs and running the city of Madison into the ground. Still, the military's no-fly zone was in force, and that should keep the news stations from letting their helicopters hover over the area.

Frank said, “The hospital isn't.”

“Fuckers,” she said, wondering how anybody could do that job. They were vultures, and the people
back home who watched it all live were no better than animals themselves.

Frank lowered his voice, saying, “We gotta keep in control here.”

“What does that mean?”

“With Jeffrey gone . . .” Frank stared out into the street. “We gotta keep our people in charge.”

“You mean you?” Lena asked, but she could read on his face that he hadn't meant it that way. She asked, “What's wrong with you? Are you sick?”

He shrugged, wiping his mouth with a dirty-looking handkerchief. “Me and Matt ate something bad last night.” She was startled to see tears in his eyes at the mention of Matt. Lena could not imagine what it had been like for him to watch his friend die right in front of his eyes. Frank had been Matt's supervisor when the younger man first came onto the force. Almost twenty years had passed since then and they had spent just about every working day in each other's company.

Frank said, “We know Nick. We know what kind of guy he is. He needs all the support we can give him.”

“Is that what you were talking about in the office?” Lena asked. “It didn't seem like you were so hot on supporting him five minutes ago.”

“We have a difference of opinion about how this should go down. I don't want some bureaucrat walking in here and fucking things up.”

“This isn't a cowboy movie,” Lena countered. “If the negotiator knows what he's doing, then we should follow his lead.”

“It's not a guy,” Frank said. “It's a woman.”

Lena gave him a scathing look. Frank had made it clear from Lena's first day that he did not think women belonged in uniform. It must have burned him up knowing that a woman was coming down from Atlanta to take charge.

Frank said, “It ain't about her being a female.”

Lena shook her head, pissed off as hell that he was worried about something as stupid as this. “You don't get into the freaking GBI baking cookies.”

“Nick trained with this gal when he first joined up. He knows her.”

“What'd he tell you?”

“He won't talk about it,” Frank said, “but everybody knows what happened.”

Lena bristled. “I don't.”

“They were holed up in a restaurant outside of Whitfield. Two idiots with guns looking to score off the lunch crowd.” He shook his head. “She hesitated. The whole thing went bad in less than a minute. Six people died.” He gave her a knowing look. “We got our people in there praying for a savior,” he jabbed a finger at the station, “and she ain't got the balls to do it.”

Lena stared across the street. They only had six people left in the squad room.

She looked back at Frank. “We need to find out what's going on in there.” There were parents and wives and boyfriends who were left hanging, waiting to find out whether or not their loved one was living or dead. Lena knew what it felt like to lose somebody, but at least she had found out Sibyl was dead fairly fast. She hadn't had to wait like the fami
lies were doing now. Jeffrey had told her, then they had gone to the morgue. That was that.

Frank asked, “What is it?”

She had let her thoughts get away from her, remembering all the second chances Jeffrey had given her, including this one today. No matter what stupid thing Lena did, he never stopped believing in her. There was no one else who would ever do that again.

Frank repeated, “What?”

“I was just thinking . . .” she said, but the sight of a helicopter swooping over the college stopped her. Lena and Frank both watched as the big black bird hung in the air over the college, then touched down on the roof of the Grant County Medical Center. The building was little more than two stories of old brick, and Lena half expected it to buckle. It obviously held, because a few seconds later Nick Shelton's phone rang. He opened it, listened for a couple of beats, then shut it.

He said, “Cavalry's here,” but there was no relief in his voice. He motioned for Lena and Frank to follow him outside the back of the cleaners, and they all made their way toward the hospital, the heat bearing down like a sauna.

Lena asked Nick, “Is there anything we can do?”

He shook his head, saying, “This's their show now. It's got nothing to do with us.”

Lena tried to get confirmation on Frank's story. “You trained with this woman?”

His tone was clipped. “Not long.”

“She good?” Lena prodded.

“She's a machine,” Nick said, but it did not sound like a compliment.

They were silent as he led them past the shops on Main Street. They reached the hospital in under five minutes, but with the heat and anxiety, it seemed like hours. Lena did not know what she had been expecting when they reached the hospital, but it was not the elegantly dressed woman who threw open the back exit door and walked toward them with a purposeful stride. Behind her were three burly men dressed in the requisite shirts and chinos of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. They wore huge Glocks on their sides and walked like they had brass balls. The woman leading them was small, around five three with a slight build, but she walked toward Nick with the same swagger.

“Glad you could get here,” Nick said, a tone of resignation in his voice. He made introductions, telling Frank and Lena, “This is Dr. Amanda Wagner. She's the GBI's chief negotiator. She's been doing this longer than anybody in the state.”

Wagner barely acknowledged them as she shook Nick's hand. She did not bother to introduce the three men she'd brought with her, and none of them seemed too upset about it. Up close, she was older than Lena had first thought, probably in her fifties. She had clear polish on her fingernails and little makeup. A simple diamond ring was all the jewelry she wore, and her hair was cut in one of those flyaway styles that took forever to fix. There was something calming about her presence, though, and Lena thought that whatever had gone on between the negotiator and Nick must have been personal. Despite what Frank had said, there was nothing
hesitant about Amanda Wagner. She seemed more than ready to jump into the fray.

Wagner spoke in a cultured drawl, asking Nick, “We've got two adult male shooters, heavily armed, with six hostages, three of them children?”

“That's correct,” Nick said. “Phones and utilities are controlled. We're monitoring for cell transmissions, but nothing's come out yet.”

“This way?” she asked. Nick nodded and they walked back toward the cleaners as she questioned him. “Car been found?”

“We're working on it.”

“Entrances and exits?”

“Secured.”

“Sharpshooters?”

“Standard six-point formation.”

“Minicams?”

“We'll need them from you.”

She glanced behind her, and one of the men got on his cell phone. She continued, “The jail population?”

“Evacuated to Macon.”

Overhead, the helicopter that had brought them here took off. Wagner waited for the roar of the blades to die down before asking, “Have you established contact?”

“I got one of my men on the phone. They haven't picked up yet.”

“Is he trained in negotiation?” Wagner asked, though surely she knew the answer. Nick shook his head, and she said, “Let's hope they don't answer, Nicky. The first contact is generally the primary
negotiator throughout the entire siege. I thought you'd learned that lesson.” She paused a moment, but when Nick did not respond, she suggested, “Perhaps you could stop him and get me the number?”

Nick took his radio off his belt. He walked ahead of them, relaying the order. When he called out the station's phone number, one of the men from Wagner's team dialed it into a cell phone and held it to his ear.

“Who've we got inside?” she asked as they started walking again. “Run it down for me one more time.”

Nick recited like a good student, numbering people off on his fingers. “Marla Simms, station secretary. She's elderly. She won't be much help. Brad Stephens, foot patrol. He's got six years on the job.”

Wagner asked Frank, “Can we count on him?”

Frank seemed surprised she had addressed the question to him. “He's a solid beat cop.”

Lena felt the need to add, “He's kind of shaky under stress.”

They all turned to look at her. Frank seemed angry, but Lena did not regret warning the negotiator about Brad. “I rode in a squad car with him last year. He's not steady under pressure.”

Wagner gave her a look of appraisal. “You've been a detective for how long?”

Lena felt a lump in her throat, and all her resolve disappeared with that one question. “I took some time off this year for personal—”