“Me?” Amanda’s mind couldn’t handle these sudden shifts. “Alone?”
“I told Cindy I’d go to the Five and check the license box for Lucy’s ID.”
“That’s very convenient.”
“Bubba Keller is one of your father’s poker buddies, right?”
Amanda wondered if she was making an allusion to the Klan. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Keller runs the jail.”
“And?”
“And, if you go to the jail and ask to speak with Juice, it’s no big deal. If you go to the jail with me and ask to speak to Juice, it gets back to your father.”
Amanda didn’t know what to say. She felt caught out, as if Evelyn was suddenly privy to all the lies Amanda had told Duke over the last week.
“It’s all right,” Evelyn said. “We all have to answer to someone.”
Evelyn didn’t seem to have to answer to anybody. Amanda said, “Let me get this straight: you want me to waltz into the jail and ask to speak to a prisoner who’s just been arrested for murder?”
Evelyn shrugged. “Why not?”
fifteen
Present Day
SUZANNA FORD
Zanna woke with a start. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t see. Her throat ached. She could barely swallow. She turned her head back and forth. A pillow cupped her head. She was lying down. She was in bed.
She tried to say “help,” but her lips would not move. The word got trapped in her mouth. She tried again.
“Help …”
She coughed. Her throat was bone dry. Her eyes throbbed in her head. Every movement sent pain shooting through her body. She was blindfolded. She didn’t know where she was. All she remembered was the man.
The man.
His weight shifted on the bed as he stood up. They weren’t in the hotel room anymore. The low rumble of traffic weaving through downtown had been replaced by two noises. The first one was a hum, like the white-noise machine they bought her grandmother for Christmas one year. It kept up a steady hushing sound.
Hush, little baby … don’t say a word …
The other noise was harder to place. It was so familiar, but every time she thought she had it pinned down, it would change. A whistling sound. Not like a train. Like air sucking through a tunnel. An underwater tunnel. A pneumatic tube.
There was no regularity to it. It only served to make her feel more out of body. More out of place. She didn’t even know if she was still in Atlanta. Or Georgia. Or America. She had no idea how long she’d been out. She had no sense of time or place. She knew nothing but the fear of anticipation.
The man started mumbling again. There was the sound of a faucet turning on. The splash of water in a metal bowl.
Zanna’s teeth started chattering. She wanted meth. She needed meth. Her body was starting to convulse. She was going to lose it. She was going to start screaming. Maybe she should scream. Maybe she should shout so loud that he had to kill her, because she had no doubt that’s what this man was going to do. It was only a matter of the hell he would put her through first.
Ted Bundy. John Wayne Gacy. Jeffrey Dahmer. The Night Stalker. The Green River Killer.
Zanna had read every book Ann Rule had ever written, and when there wasn’t a book, there was a TV movie or an Internet site or a Dateline or a 20/20 or a 48 Hours, and she remembered every lurid detail about every sadistic freak who had ever kidnapped a woman for his own demonic pleasure.
And this man was a demon. There was no arguing with that. Zanna’s parents had given up on church when she was a kid, but she had lived in Roswell long enough to recognize a stray verse, the cadence of scripture. The man mumbled prayers and he beseeched God for His forgiveness, but Zanna knew that no one was listening except the Devil himself.
The water turned off. Two footsteps, and he was back on the bed. She felt the weight of him as he sat down beside her. More water dripping. Loud drops into the bowl.
Suzanna flinched as the warm, wet rag washed along her skin.
sixteen
Present Day
TUESDAY
Sara’s knees protested as she worked her way around the living room, dipping a washcloth into the bowl of vinegar and hot water, then washing down the baseboards section by maddening section.
Some women sat around watching TV when they were upset. Others went shopping or gorged themselves on chocolate. It was Sara’s lot in life that she cleaned. She blamed her mother. Cathy Linton’s response to any ailment was generally hard labor.
“Ugh.” Sara sat back on her heels. She wasn’t used to cleaning her own apartment. She was dripping sweat despite the low temperature on her thermostat. The climate was not being appreciated by anyone. Her greyhounds were huddled on the couch as if they were in the middle of an arctic winter.
Technically, Sara was supposed to be at work right now, but there was an unspoken rule in the ER that any person could leave if three really horrendous things happened to them during one shift. Today, Sara had been kicked in the leg by a homeless man, narrowly avoided being punched in the face by the mother of a boy who was so high he’d defecated on himself, and had her hand vomited on by one of the new interns. All before lunchtime.
If Sara’s supervisor hadn’t told her to leave, she was fairly certain she would’ve quit. Which was probably why Grady had the rule in the first place.
She finished the last section of baseboard and stood up. Her knees were wobbly from being bent for so long. Sara stretched out her hamstrings before she walked toward the kitchen with the rag and bowl. She dumped the vinegar solution down the drain, washed her hands, then picked up a dry rag and a can of Pledge to begin the next phase.
Sara looked at the clock on the microwave. Will still had not called. She imagined he was sitting on a toilet at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport waiting for a business traveler to tap his foot under the stall. Which meant there was plenty of time for him to dial her phone number. Maybe he was sending a message. Maybe he was trying to tell her that what they had was over.
Or maybe Sara was reading too much into his silence. She had never been good at playing games in relationships. She preferred to be direct. Which was at the very root of their problems.
What she desperately needed was a second opinion. Cathy Linton was at home, but Sara had a feeling her mother’s reaction would be similar to the one she had the time Sara was ill from eating an entire package of Oreos. Sure, she’d held back Sara’s hair and patted her back, but not without first demanding, “What the hell did you think would happen?”
Which was exactly what Sara kept asking herself. The worst part was that she was turning into one of those annoying people who got so caught up whining about a bad situation that they forgot they were actually capable of doing something about it.
Sara cleared off the mantel for dusting. She gently held the small cherrywood box that had belonged to her grandmother. The hinge was coming apart. Sara carefully opened the lid. Two wedding rings rested on the satin pillow.
Her husband had been a cop, which was basically where the similarity between Jeffrey and Will ended. Or maybe not. They were both funny. They had the same strong, moral character that Sara had always been attracted to. They were both drawn to duty. They were drawn to Sara.