“She’s got some bigwig from the GBI down here to look into the case. Knox has already dealt with him. He’s figured out Tommy got the pen from one of us.”
Lena tasted something awful in the back of her throat. Tommy was her prisoner. He was in her care. Legally, he was her responsibility. “Do they know the cartridge came from me?”
Frank dug around in his coat pocket. He tossed Lena a cardboard packet. She recognized the Cross logo. A new ink cartridge was wrapped in a plastic shell.
She asked, “Did you just buy this?”
“I’m not that stupid,” he told her. “I buy them online. You can’t get the cartridges local.”
Everyone else did, too. It was a pain in the butt, but the gift meant a lot, especially now that Jeffrey was gone. Lena had a stack of ten cartridges in a box back home.
Frank said, “We’re both in trouble on this.”
Lena didn’t respond. She was running through her time with Tommy, trying to figure out when he’d decided to take his own life. Had he said anything to her before she locked the cell door? Lena didn’t think so. Maybe that was one of the many clues she had missed. Tommy had calmed down too quickly after she’d left the room to get him some tissues. She had taken him back to the cells shortly after. He’d been sniffling, but he’d kept his mouth shut, even as she shut the heavy metal door. They always said the quiet ones were the ones who had made up their minds. How had she missed that? How had she not noticed?
Frank said, “We need to stick together, get our stories straight.”
She shook her head. How did she get into this mess? Why was it that the minute she crawled out of one pile of shit, she fell back into another one?
“Sara’s out for blood. Your blood. She thinks she’s finally found a way to punish you for what you did to Jeffrey.”
Lena’s head shot up. “I didn’t do anything.”
“We both know different from that, don’t we?”
His words cut straight through her. “You’re a bastard. You know that?”
“Yeah, well, back at you.”
Lena felt her hand stinging. She was gripping the plastic packet hard enough to cut into her skin. She tried to pry it open, but her nails were too short. She ended up biting the cardboard with her teeth and ripping it away from the plastic.
Frank asked, “How solid is that confession?”
She jammed the new cartridge into her pen. “Tommy admitted to everything. He put it on paper.”
“You better shout that to whoever listens or his daddy’s gonna sue you for everything you have.”
She snorted. “A fifteen-year-old Celica and an eighty-thousand-dollar mortgage on a sixty-thousand-dollar house? He can have the keys right now.”
“You’ll lose your badge.”
“Maybe I should.” She gave up on the pen. She gave up on everything. Four years ago, Lena would have been scrambling for a way to cover this up. Now, all she wanted to do was tell the truth and move on. “This doesn’t change anything, Frank. Tommy was my responsibility. I’ll take the consequences. But you’ll have to take yours, too.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that.”
She looked up at him, wondering at the sudden shift. “What do you mean?”
“Tommy killed that girl. You think anybody’s gonna care about some little retard murderer slitting his wrists in a jail cell?” Frank wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “He killed that girl, Lee. He stabbed her through the neck like he was taking down an animal. All because she wouldn’t let him get his pecker off.”
Lena closed her eyes. She was so damn tired that she couldn’t think. But she knew Frank was right. No one would care about Tommy’s death. But that didn’t mean it was okay. That didn’t change what happened in the garage today, or fix the damage that had been done to Brad.
She told him, “Your drinking is out of hand. I didn’t say anything about Brad being unfit. Maybe he’ll be okay or maybe my silence will end up meaning the death of him. I don’t know. I’m not gonna watch the same thing happen to you. You’re not fit for duty, Frank. You shouldn’t be behind the wheel of a car, let alone carrying a gun.”
Frank knelt down in front of her. “There’s a hell of a lot more you could lose than just your shield, Lena. Think about that.”
“There’s nothing to think about. I’ve made up my mind.”
“I could always put in a word with Gavin Wayne about your little boyfriend.”
“Be sure to brush the whisky off your breath before you do.”
“We both know the kind of trouble I could make.”
“Jared will know I made a mistake,” Lena said. “And he’ll know I stood up to take the consequences.”
“When did you turn so noble?”
She didn’t answer, but the thought of Tommy Braham sitting in those cells, scraping away at his wrists with Lena’s ink pen, made her feel like the least noble person on the planet. How had she managed to fuck up so much in so little time?
Frank pressed, “Does your little boyfriend really know you, Lena? I mean, really know you?” His lips curled up in a smile. “Think about all the things you’ve told me over the years. All those squad cars we sat in together. All those late nights and early mornings after Jeffrey died.” He showed his yellow teeth. “You’re a dirty cop, Lee. You think your boyfriend’s gonna forgive that?”
“I’m not dirty.” She had stepped right up to the line many times, but Lena had never crossed it. “I’m a good cop, and you know it.”
“You sure about that?” He sneered at her. “Brad got stabbed while you were standing with your thumb up your ass. You talked a nineteen-year-old retard into killing himself. I got a witness in the next cell who will say anything I tell him to as long as I let him go back to his wife.”
Lena felt her heart stop in her chest.
“You think I’m just gonna walk away from my pension, lay down my gun and my shield, because you’ve developed a conscience?” He spat out a laugh. “Trust me, girl, you don’t want me to start telling people what I know about you, because by the time I shut up, you’ll be lucky if you don’t find yourself sitting on the wrong side of a jail door.”
“You wouldn’t do that to me.”
“You strut around town like you’re some hot piece of shit wearing your bad reputation on your sleeve. Wasn’t that what Jeffrey was always warning you about? Too many burned bridges. Too many people in town with knives in their backs.”
“Shut up, Frank.”
“The thing about having a bad reputation is that folks will believe just about anything people say about you.” He sat back on his heels. “The chief could’ve gotten away with murder because no one thought he was capable of doing anything bad. You think people feel that way about you? You think they trust your character?”
“You can’t prove anything and you know it.”
“Do I need to?” He smiled again, his lips peeling back from his teeth. “I’ve lived in this town all my life. People know me. They trust me—trust what I tell them. And if I say you’re a dirty cop …” He shrugged.