Broken (18 page)

“How many did you get?”

“Twenty-five, I think? Everyone on the force got one.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“Yes,” she acknowledged. Jeffrey hadn’t given her a budget, and Sara’s idea of an expensive gift had a higher price tag than Jeffrey’s. It all seemed so silly now. Why had they wasted days being angry at each other? Why had it mattered so much?

Will surprised her, saying, “Your accent is different down here.”

She laughed, taken off guard. “Do I sound country?”

“Your mother has a beautiful accent.”

“Cultured,” Sara said. Except for tonight, she had always loved the sound of her mother’s voice.

He surprised her again. “You’ve kind of been dragged into the middle of this case, but in a lot of ways, you’ve put yourself there on your own.”

She felt a blush brought on by his candor.

His expression was soft, understanding. She wondered if it was genuine or if he was using one of his interviewing techniques. “I know this sounds forward, but I’m assuming you had me meet you at the hospital in plain view of Main Street for a reason.”

Sara laughed again, this time at herself, the situation. “It wasn’t that calculated. It must seem that way now.”

“I’m staying at your house. People are going to see my car parked on the street. I know how small towns work. They’re going to think something’s going on between us.”

“But there’s not. You’re married and I’m—”

His smile was more of a wince. “The truth isn’t much help in these types of situations. You must know that.”

Sara looked back at his office supplies. He had separated the rubber bands by color. Even the paper clips were turned in the same direction.

Will said, “Something is going on here. I’m not sure if it’s what you think, but something’s not right at that station house.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know yet, but you need to prepare yourself for some bad reactions.” He spoke carefully. “Cases like this, where the police get questioned. They don’t like that. Part of the reason they’re good at their jobs is because they think they’re right about everything.”

“I’m a doctor. Trust me, it’s not just cops who feel that way.”

“I want you to be prepared, because when we get to the end of this, whether I find out Tommy was guilty, or Detective Adams
screwed up, or if I find out nothing was wrong at all, people are going to hate you for bringing me down here.”

“They’ve hated me before.”

“They’re going to say you’re dragging your husband’s memory through the mud.”

“They don’t know anything about him. They have no idea.”

“They’ll fill in the blanks themselves. It’s going to get a lot harder than it is now.” He turned his body toward her. “I’m going to make it harder. I’m going to do some things on purpose to get them mad enough to show their hand. Are you going to be okay with that?”

“What if I say no?”

“Then I’ll find another way to do it that doesn’t upset you.”

She could see that his offer was genuine, and felt guilty for questioning his motives before. “This isn’t my home anymore. I’m leaving in three days no matter what happens. Do what you have to do.”

“And your family?”

“My family supports me.” Sara wasn’t certain about a lot of things these days, but this, at least, was true. “They may not agree with me, but they support me.”

“All right.” He looked relieved, as if he’d gotten the hard part out of the way. “I need to get Julie Smith’s phone number from you.”

Sara had anticipated the request. She took a sheet of folded paper out of her pocket and handed it to Will.

He pointed to the Princess phone beside the couch. “Is this the same line as the house?”

She nodded.

“I wanted to make sure the caller ID was the same.” He picked up the phone and stared at the rotary dial.

Sara rolled her eyes. “My parents don’t exactly embrace technology.”

He started spinning the dial, but the rotary slipped out from under his finger in the middle of the number.

“Let me,” she offered, taking the phone before he could protest.
She spun the dial, the motion coming back to her more quickly than she wanted to admit.

Will put the receiver to his ear just as an automated squawk blared down the line. He held the phone between them so they both could hear the recorded voice advising the caller that the line he was trying to reach had been disconnected.

Will put the phone back on the hook. “I’ll have Faith do a trace tomorrow. My bet is that it was a throwaway phone. Do you remember anything else about Julie? Anything she said?”

“I could tell that she was calling from a bathroom,” Sara told him. “She said that Tommy had texted her that he was in jail. Maybe you can get the transcript from his phone?”

“Faith can do that, too,” he offered. “What about Julie’s voice? Did she sound young? Old?”

“She sounded really young and really country.”

“Country how?”

Sara smiled. “Not like me. At least I hope not. She sounded more like the wrong side of the tracks. She used the word ‘you’uns.’”

“That’s mountain talk.”

“Is it? I’m not up on dialects.”

“I had an assignment in Blue Ridge a while back,” he explained. “Do you hear that word around here much?”

She shook her head. “Not really. Not that I can remember.”

“All right, so we’ve got someone young, probably a transplant from north Georgia or Appalachia. She told you that she was Tommy’s friend. We’ll dump his phone line and see if they’ve ever called each other.”

“Julie Smith,” Sara said, wondering why it had never occurred to her that the girl might be using an alias.

“Maybe the phone taps will give us something.”

Sara indicated the photocopies she’d made. “Were these helpful?”

“Not in the way you’re thinking.” He thumbed through the pages. “I asked the station secretary, Mrs. Simms, to fax these to Faith. Can you look at them for me?”

Sara glanced through the pages. There were handwritten numbers at the top. She stopped on the eleventh page. Someone had written the number twelve in the corner. The two was backward. “Did you number these?”

“Yes,” he said. “When I got them back from Mrs. Simms, one of the pages was missing. Page eleven. The page right after Detective Adams’s field report.”

Sara thumbed back to the second page. The two was written the correct way. She checked the third and fifth page. Both numbers were facing the correct direction. The pen had been pressed so hard that the paper felt embossed.

He asked, “Can you remember what’s missing?”

Sara went through them again, concentrating on the content instead of the numbering. “The 911 transcript.”

“You’re sure?”

“There was another page from Lena’s notebook. It was taped on the sheet of paper by itself. She wrote down the contents of the 911 call.”

“Can you remember what it said?”

“I know that it was a woman’s voice. I can’t really remember the rest.”

“Did they trace the number she called from?”

“I didn’t see anything indicating they had.” She shook her head. “Why can’t I remember what else it said?”

“We can get it from the call center.”

“Unless they managed to lose it.”

“It’s no big deal,” he told her. “You got the file from Frank, right?”

“From Carl Phillips.”

“The booking officer?”

“Yes. Did you talk to him tonight?”

“He’s gone on vacation with his family. No idea when he’ll be back. No phone. No cell. No way to get in touch with him.”

Sara felt her mouth drop open.

“I doubt he’s really gone. They’re probably keeping him away from me. He might even be at the station tomorrow, hiding in plain sight.”

“He’s the only African American on the force.”

Will laughed. “Thanks for the tip. That narrows things down considerably.”

“I can’t believe they’re doing this.”

“Cops don’t like to be questioned. They circle their wagons, even if they know it’s wrong.”

She wondered if Jeffrey had ever done anything like this. If he had, it was only because he wanted to be the one to clean out his own house. He would never let someone come in and do his job for him.

Will asked, “Where did you make the copies?”

“At the front of the room.”

“The copier that’s on the table by the coffeemaker?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you get some coffee?”

“I didn’t want to dawdle.” Everyone had been staring at her like she was a monster. Sara’s only goal had been to make the copies and get out of there as soon as possible.

“So, you’re standing by the copier waiting for the pages to come out. That looked like an old machine. Does it make a noise?”

She nodded, wondering where this was going.

“Like a whirring or a clunking?”

“Both,” she answered, and she could hear the sound in her head.

“How much coffee was left in the pot? Did anyone come up?”

She shook her head. “No. The pot was full.” The machine was older than the copier. She could smell the grounds burning.

“Did anyone talk to you?”

“No. No one would even look at—” She saw herself standing by the copier. The machine was old, the kind you had to feed the pages into one at a time. She had read the file to keep from staring aimlessly at the wall. “Oh.”

“What do you remember?”

“I skimmed the 911 transcript while I was waiting for the copier to warm up.”

“What did it say?”

She could see herself standing back in the station reading the files. “The woman called it a possible suicide. She said she was worried her friend had done something.” Sara narrowed her eyes, trying to force the memory to come. “She was worried Allison was going to kill herself because she’d gotten into a fight with her boyfriend.”

“Did she say where she thought Allison was?”

“Lover’s Point,” she recalled. “That’s what town people call it. It’s the cove where Allison was found.”

“What’s it like?”

“A cove.” Sara shrugged. “It’s romantic if you’re out for a walk, but not in the pouring rain and cold.”

“Is it secluded?”

“Yes.”

“So, according to this caller, Allison got into a fight with her boyfriend. The caller was worried Allison was suicidal. The caller also knew she was going to be at Lover’s Point.”

“It was probably Julie Smith. Is that what you’re thinking?”

“Maybe, but why? The caller wanted to bring attention to Allison’s murder. Julie Smith was trying to help Tommy Braham get away with murder. They seem to have opposite goals.” He paused. “Faith is trying to track her down, but we’re going to need more than a disconnected number to find her.”

“Frank and Lena are probably thinking the same thing,” Sara guessed. “That’s why they hid the transcript. They either don’t want you to talk to her or they want to talk to her first.”

Will scratched his cheek. “Maybe.” He was obviously considering another option. For her part, Sara could not get past Marla Simms hiding information in a formal investigation. The old woman had worked at the station longer than anyone could remember.

Will sat up on the couch. He thumbed through the pages on the
coffee table. “Mrs. Simms took it upon herself to send some extra information. I had Agent Mitchell scan these in so I could print them out.” He found what he was looking for and handed it to Sara. She recognized the form, a two-page incident report. Patrolmen filled out dozens of these a week to notate cases where they had been called in but no arrest had been made. They were useful to have in case something bad happened later, sort of like a progress report on a person or an area of town.

Will said, “These are incident reports documenting Tommy’s run-ins with the law.” He indicated the pages in Sara’s hands. “This one talks about a girl he got into a screaming match with at the roller rink.”

She saw there was a yellow dot in the corner of the report.

He asked, “Did you ever know Tommy to have a temper?”

“Never.” Sara checked through the other incident reports. There were two more, each two stapled pages, each with a dot from a colored marker in the corner. One was red. The other was green.

She looked back up at Will. “Tommy was pretty even-keeled. Kids like that tend to be very sweet.”

“Because of their mental state?”

Sara stared at him, thinking back on their conversation in the car. “Yes. He was slow. Very gullible.”

Much like Sara.

She handed a different report back to Will, showing it to him upside down. She pointed to the middle of the page where Carl Phillips had described the incident. “Did you read this part?”

She watched Will’s eyes go to the red dot. “The barking dog. Tommy started screaming at his neighbor. The woman called the cops.”

“Right.” She took the third report and handed it to him in the right direction. “Then there’s this.”

Again, his eyes went not to the words, but to the colored dot. “Loud music reported a few days ago. Tommy yelled at the officer.”

She was silent, waiting for him to send out another feeler.

He took his time, finally asking, “What are you thinking?”

She was thinking he was incredibly clever. Sara looked at the folders, the markers. He color-coded everything. His penmanship was awkward, like a child’s. He’d written the number two backward, but not with any consistency. He couldn’t tell whether a page was upside down or not. Sara might not have even noticed under different circumstances. Hell, she
hadn’t
noticed the last time she’d spent time with him. He’d been in her home. She had watched him work and never realized there was a problem.

He joked, “Is this some kind of test?”

“No.” She couldn’t do this to him. Not like this. Maybe not ever. “I was looking at the dates.” She shuffled through the forms to give herself something to do. “All the incidents happened within the last few weeks. Something must have set him off. Tommy didn’t have a temper until recently.”

“I’ll see what I can find.” He took back the pages and stacked them on the table. He was nervous, and he was not stupid. He had spent a lifetime looking for cues, searching for tells and ticks, so that he could keep his secret hidden.