“It’s Will,” he said. “I’m outside the station house.”
Amanda never gave anyone the benefit of the doubt, not least of all Will. “Did you just get there?”
“I got in last night.” He felt a slight bit of relief. In the back of his mind, he’d been worried that Sara would call Amanda and ask that Will be taken off the case. She would want the best the GBI had to offer, not a functional illiterate with a suitcase full of dirty laundry.
Amanda’s tone was clipped. “Run it down for me, Will. I haven’t got all day.”
He told her Sara’s story: that she had gotten a call from Julie Smith, then Frank Wallace. That she had gone to the jail and found Tommy Braham dead. He didn’t tell her about Sara’s beef with Lena Adams, instead skipping ahead to the Cross pens that Jeffrey Tolliver had given his staff. “I’m pretty sure the ink cartridge Braham used came from one of those pens.”
“Good luck finding out whose.” Amanda picked at the same thread Will had spotted. “There’s no way of knowing exactly when Tommy Braham died-before or after Frank Wallace called Sara.”
“We’ll see what the autopsy brings. Dr. Linton is going to do it.”
“There’s a bright spot in a bleak day.”
“It’s good to have someone down here who knows what they’re doing.”
“Shouldn’t that be you, Will?”
He let the remark go unanswered.
She asked, “What’s your impression on the Allison Spooner homicide?”
“I’m fifty-fifty. Maybe Tommy Braham did it. Or maybe her killer’s assuming he got away with murder.”
“Well, figure it out and get back here fast, because they’re not going to like you very much if you prove he’s innocent.”
She was right. One thing cops hated more than bad guys was being proven wrong about the bad guys. Will had seen an Atlanta detective nearly go into convulsions as he argued that the DNA exonerating his suspect had to be wrong.
Amanda told him, “I called Macon General this morning. Brad Stephens had to be taken back into surgery. They missed a bleeder the first time.”
“Is he all right?”
“Prognosis is guarded. They’re keeping him sedated for the time being, so he’s not going to talk to anyone anytime soon.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s not going to remember anything useful except that his fellow officers saved his life.”
“Be that as it may, he’s still a cop. You need to go over there at some point and share in the camaraderie. Donate some blood. Buy him a magazine.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What’s your game plan?”
“I’m going to rattle some cages this morning and see if anything falls out. Faith is working on the paper trail for Julie Smith and Carl Phillips. Talking to them is my priority, but we’ve got to find them first. I want to check out the lake where Spooner was found, then go see the garage where she lived. It feels like her murder is at the center of this. Whatever they’re hiding from me goes back to her death.”
“You don’t think they’re tap-dancing because of the suicide?”
“They might be, but my gut is telling me something else is going on.”
“Ah, your famous women’s intuition.” Amanda never missed an opportunity to insult him. “What about Adams?”
“I’ll keep her close by.”
“I met her once. She’ll be a hard nut to crack.”
“So I hear.”
“Loop me in at the end of the day.”
She hung up the phone before Will could respond. He rubbed his fingers through his hair, wondering if the damp was from the rain or his own sweat.
For the second time that morning, Will jumped when someone knocked on the window of his car. This time the knocker was an older black man, and he stood at the passenger door, grinning at Will’s reaction. He made a rolling motion with his arm. Will leaned over and opened the door.
“Come in out of the rain,” Will offered, thinking the man was the first nonwhite face he’d seen since he’d arrived in Grant County. He didn’t want to make assumptions, but he would’ve bet half his paycheck that the African Americans in town didn’t make a habit of approaching investigators outside the police station.
The man groaned as he climbed into the bucket seat. Will saw that he walked with a cane. His leg was stiff, and bent awkwardly at the knee. Rain dripped from his heavy coat. A slight mist clung to his salt-and-pepper beard. He wasn’t as old as Will had first thought-maybe early sixties. When he spoke, his voice was like sandpaper scratching through gravel.
“Lionel Harris.”
“Will Trent.”
Lionel took off his glove and they shook hands. “My father was named Will. Short for William.”
“Me too,” Will told him, though his birth certificate said no such thing.
Lionel pointed up the street. “Daddy worked at the diner for forty-three years. Old Pete closed it down back in oh-one.” He rubbed his hand along the leather dashboard. “What year is this?”
Will assumed he meant the car. “Seventy-nine.”
“You do all the work yourself?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Nah,” he said, though he’d found the kink in the leather under the handle of the glove box. “You did a good job, son. Real good job.”
“I take it you’re interested in cars?”
“My wife would tell you I’m too interested for my own good.” He glanced pointedly at Will’s wedding ring. “You known Sara long?”
“Not too long.”
“She took care of my grandson. He had asthma real bad. She’d rush over in the middle of the night to help him. Sometimes she’d still be in her pajamas.”
Will tried not to think of Sara in her pajamas, though he imagined from Lionel’s story that they were probably not the ones his mind had conjured.
“Sara’s from good people.” He ran his finger along the trim on the door, which, thankfully, Will had done a better job covering. Lionel seemed to agree. “You learned from your mistakes. Got a good fold on this corner here.”
“It took me half the day.”
“Worth every minute,” he approved.
Will felt foolish even as he asked, “Your son isn’t Carl Phillips, is he?”
Lionel gave a deep, satisfied laugh. “’Cause he’s black and I’m black-”
“No,” Will interrupted, then, “Well, yes.” He felt uncomfortable even as he explained, “There doesn’t seem to be much of a minority population around here.”
“I guess coming from Atlanta, you’ve had a bit of a culture shock.”
He was right. In Atlanta, Will’s white skin made him a minority. Grant County stood as a stark contrast. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right. You aren’t the first person to do that. Carl goes to my church, but I don’t know him other than that.”
Will tried to steer the conversation away from his own stupidity. “How do you know I’m from Atlanta?”
“License plate says Fulton County.”
Will smiled patiently.
“All right, you got me,” Lionel relented. “You’re here to look into that stuff with Tommy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He was a good kid.”
“You knew him?”
“I saw him in town a lot. He’s the kind of kid got thirty different jobs-mowing lawns, walking dogs, hauling trash, helping people move house. Just about everybody in town knew him.”
“How do people feel about him stabbing Brad Stephens?”
“About how you’d expect. Confused. Angry. Torn between thinking there was some mistake and thinking…” His voice trailed off. “He was a bit tetched in the head.”
“He’d never been violent before?”
“No, but you never know. Maybe something set him off, turned on the crazy.”
In Will’s experience, people were either prone to violence or not. He didn’t think Tommy Braham was an exception. “Do you think that’s what happened-he just snapped?”
“I don’t know what to think about nothin’ anymore, and that’s the God’s honest truth.” He gave a weary sigh. “Lord, I feel old today.”