The Silent Wife (Will Trent #10) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,149
gaze down.
“You’re gonna be sworn in under oath. Which set of notes is the truth?”
Lena did not look up, but she put her hand on the copies. “These.”
He sat back in his chair. The frozen bag of fries was leaving a wet mark on his desk. “Where’s your original notebook?”
“At home.”
“Get rid of it,” he told her. “If this is your choice, then you need to stand by it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me about your interview with Leslie Truong.”
Lena shifted nervously on her feet. “I asked her if she had seen anyone else in the area. She said she passed three women on her walk into the woods. They were heading toward the college. Two of them were wearing Grant Tech colors. The other wasn’t, but she looked like a student. Leslie didn’t recognize any of them. I really pressed her on it and—”
“And the man?”
“She thought maybe he was a student, too?” Lena briefly met his gaze before quickly looking away. “All she remembered was the knit cap. It was black knit, a beanie type. She couldn’t remember his features, or his hair color or eyes, or how tall he was or how big. She said he just looked like a regular guy, probably a student. He was jogging down the path.”
“Jogging? Not running?”
“That’s what I asked, and she said definitely jogging. He wasn’t acting suspicious or anything. She assumed he was a student out for a run.”
“She said student, meaning he was in that age group?”
“I asked, and she said she couldn’t say, except that he ran like he was younger. I guess older people, when they run, maybe they’ve got bad knees or they aren’t as fast?” She shrugged. “I’m sorry, Chief. Is she … is she dead because I …”
Her eyes met his. This time, she did not look away.
Frank’s words came back to Jeffrey. He could crush her right now. He could say the thing that would grind her into dust, and she would never be able to do the job again.
He said, “She’s dead because someone murdered her.”
The overhead light caught the moisture in her eyes.
“The vast majority of policing is social work.” He had told her this before, but he hoped like hell this time the lesson had meaning. “I know what it’s like being on patrol. You’re writing tickets all day, looking for jaywalkers, bored out of your mind, then a dead body shows up and it’s exciting.”
Lena’s guilty expression confirmed he had hit on the truth.
“Excitement is great, but it gives you tunnel vision. You miss things. You make stupid mistakes. We don’t get a lot of leeway as police officers. We have to see everything. Even the smallest detail can mean the difference between life and death.”
“I’m sorry, Chief.” She promised, “It won’t happen again.”
Jeffrey wasn’t finished. “The reason I moved here from Birmingham is because I was sick of locking up one drug dealer for shooting another drug dealer. I wanted to feel connected to the people I was protecting. You can be a good cop, Lena. A damn good cop. But you need to work on that connection.”
“Yes, Chief. I will.”
Jeffrey wasn’t sure she would do a damn thing, but lecturing her for another ten minutes or ten hours was not going to change that. “Sit down.”
Lena sat on the edge of the chair.
Jeffrey’s nose had started to itch like he needed to sneeze. He put the frozen fries back to his face. “Tell me about the construction site.”
Lena sucked in a quick breath as she took her notebook out of her back pocket. “I talked to everyone on the site. They’re building a climate-controlled storage facility.”
Jeffrey nodded for her to continue.
“There’s, like, extra workmen from what you’d expect. Garage door installers and welders and security alongside the usual contractors and stuff. I was going to type this up, but—”
She offered him the notebook.
Jeffrey didn’t take it. “You’re the one who was there. Did any of the names stand out?”
“No, not really.” She glanced up, then back down. The guilt was back. “I was going to run all of the names through the database to check for records or outstanding warrants, but …”
He knew he wasn’t going to like what was coming, but said, “Out with it.”
“I know you told me to go to the site and get back here as soon as possible, but—” Lena looked up at him. “I drove to the Home Depot in Memminger.”
Jeffrey sat with the information. She had disobeyed his orders—again—but her instincts were