The Silent Wife (Will Trent #10) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,95

Understood?”

“Yes, Chief.”

Jeffrey headed toward his car in the staff parking lot. His phone started to ring again. His mother. She would be well into the bottle by now. Jeffrey silenced the call. He got into the car. He bumped the gear into reverse and swung out of the space.

He tried to game out next steps as he drove toward Avondale. He would have to formally announce that Rebecca Caterino had been attacked. That would send shockwaves through the school. And it should. Some lunatic had attacked a defenseless woman with a hammer.

“Christ,” he whispered. If he thought about it hard enough, he could still remember the horror of Caterino’s sternum breaking. Jeffrey couldn’t imagine what it took to lodge a hammer inside another human being’s skull.

He shook out his hands, ridding himself of the sensation.

Leslie Truong’s mother would be at the station in a few hours. She would have questions that Jeffrey wanted to honestly try to answer. This Little Bit skateboard punk would have to be dealt with, too. If the kid was dealing pot around campus, and he was in fact the same Daryl from Rebecca Caterino’s phone book, then she was likely a client. Eliminating or confirming him as a suspect in the attack was a high priority.

Lastly, there was Lena Adams. Jeffrey would have to go back through every single piece of information she had collected and verify the work. As far as he was concerned, her training wheels were officially off. If Lena didn’t show him in real time that she could keep to the straight and narrow, he was going to send her packing.

His phone started to ring. His mother again. She was clearly on one of her benders. He couldn’t blame her. He was a shitty son. Hell, he had been a shitty chief, a shitty mentor, a shitty husband.

Jeffrey let himself stew on his missteps until he passed the sign welcoming him to the Avondale City Limits, population 4,308. Jeffrey referenced the address Chuck had given him. He should’ve run the information through his own system to make sure that the Humphries still lived at the same location, but he needn’t have bothered. Jeffrey could tell from the car parked in front of the house that the girl was still there.

Sara’s silver Z4 was in front of the mailbox. The convertible top was down to take advantage of the good weather.

“For fucksakes.” Jeffrey parked behind the $80,000 sportscar. He took a few seconds to swallow down his irritation. If Sara wanted to ride around with the top down, Dolly Parton blaring from the speakers like some sad version of a tricked-out hillbilly nerd, then godspeed.

He opened his notebook. He jotted down the list of action items from the ride over. He wasn’t as careful a note taker as he should’ve been. He was always riding Lena and Brad about making sure their asses were covered. Jeffrey hated to be thinking about it this way, but if Gerald Caterino really was going to sue the force, he needed to make sure his ass was covered, too.

He closed his notebook and pocketed his pen. He got out of the car. He looked up at the house. Avondale had at one time been filled with blue-collar workers from the railroad maintenance hub. The job had put them solidly in the middle class, and the architecture of the homes reflected that. Brick on all four sides. Aluminum-framed windows. Concrete driveways. All the modern conveniences of 1975.

The Humphreys hadn’t made any changes to the outside of the house. The white paint had yellowed, but it wasn’t peeling. The car in the driveway was an older model minivan. The front door was a high-gloss black.

Jeffrey knocked once, but the door was already opening.

The woman who answered looked drawn. She was only slightly older than Jeffrey, but her hair had gone completely gray. The curls were clipped tight to her head. Dark circles rimmed her eyes. She was wearing a house dress that zipped in the front. The way she looked at Jeffrey made him feel guilty for being here. He assumed Sara would make him feel worse.

“Mrs. Humphrey?”

She looked into the driveway, then the street. “Did you see a blue Ford truck?”

“No, ma’am.”

“If my husband comes, you’ll have to leave. He doesn’t want Tommi bothered with this. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She opened the door wide enough for him to pass. “They’re in the back yard. Please, be quick.”

Jeffrey walked into what he was expecting, a rectangle chopped up