The Silent Wife (Will Trent #10) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,81
Jeffrey’s mug before filling his own. “Makes me feel sorry for Sara. The upside of divorcing you was she’d get to stop saving your sorry ass.”
Jeffrey was not in the mood. “You gonna break my balls about that for the rest of my life?”
“I assume the natural order of things will have me keeling over well before you.”
“I think you mean natural selection,” Jeffrey said. “Are you telling me when you go to Biloxi every other month for your gambling trips, you’re not getting your pecker wet?”
“Every other month is your take-home message. Pigs get fat. Hogs get slaughtered.” He raised his mug before taking his leave.
Jeffrey threw the rest of his coffee down the sink. He was too jittery for more caffeine.
In the squad room, he found Marla Simms, the station secretary, taking the dust cloth off her IBM Selectric. Jeffrey had bought her a computer, but as far as he knew, she had never turned it on. All of his missives were either written out in her perfect Palmer Method or pecked onto the typewriter. Some of the younger cops cringed every time she fired up the machine. The ball punching into the paper sounded like a gunshot.
The saloon doors squeaked. Lena Adams was shifting her utility belt around her waist.
“Lena, my office.”
She looked up at him like the proverbial deer in the headlights.
Jeffrey sat down at his desk. His eye caught the bookshelf, which was filled with textbooks and manuals and, worst of all, an old photograph of his mother. “Fuck me.”
“Sir?”
“My—” Jeffrey waved off the subject. He had forgotten to call the florist yesterday. Now he was going to be dealing with a screaming phone call from his mother about missing her birthday. “Shut the door. Sit down.”
Lena sat on the edge of the chair. “Is something wrong?”
He could hear Sara’s nagging voice warning him that Lena always assumed she was in trouble because she had usually done something wrong. “Give me your notebook.”
She reached for her chest pocket, then stopped. “Did I do—”
“Just give it to me.”
The notebook Lena handed to him was just like every other notebook every other cop carried because Jeffrey bought them by the hundreds and kept them readily available. Technically, that made them the property of the police department, but he hoped to God that technicality never had to be tested in a court of law.
He flipped past the back pages that detailed last night’s failed search for Leslie Truong. He could read about that in Lena’s official statement. He found what he was looking for at the front of the notebook.
Lena had crossed through JANE DOE and written REBECCA CATERINO. She had not changed the original assessment—accidental death.
Jeffrey checked that her notes matched what he had sworn to in her official statement.
5:58: 911 call received at HQ.
6:02: L.A. dispatched.
6:03: L.A. met witness Leslie Truong in field behind houses.
6:04: B.S. arrived and with L.A. and Truong located body.
6:08: L.A. verified victim deceased at neck and wrist. Body positioned as noted.
6:09: L.A. called Frank.
6:15: B.S. set up perimeter.
6:22: Frank arrived.
6:28: Chief on scene.
He asked Lena, “Brad arrived when you were talking to Leslie Truong. Did he check for a pulse when you got to the body?”
“I—” Lena had stopped being defensive. Now, she was strategizing. “I don’t remember.”
Lena was the senior officer on scene. If she told Brad not to double-check behind her, then Brad would not have dared to double-check behind her. “Next time you run that bus over another cop, make sure you give it enough gas.”
Lena looked down at the floor.
Jeffrey studied the notebook. He had lied to Sara about confirming the details yesterday. Each line of text took up one line on the page. The ink was the same color. Either Lena was incredibly prescient, or she had done exactly what she had told Jeffrey that she had done.
He turned the page. Lena had drawn a rough diagram of the position of the body. She had noted that the clothes were in place. Nothing had looked disturbed or unusual. She had been very thorough, except for leaving out one thing.
He asked, “Why did you turn off the iPod?”
Lena looked trapped.
He dropped the notebook on his desk. “You’re not in trouble. I just want the truth.”
She finally shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I was … I was trying to do things right, but I did it kind of accidentally, like, I have an iPod Shuffle I run with, and I don’t charge it like I should so