“Stop putting words in my mouth. Nobody asks for that,” he said. “All right, maybe I was clumsy, but it’s true that she’s not in a high-risk category. She’s a good student. She’s not into the drug scene. She’s like you, always has her nose in a book. I mean, for chrissakes, she was out running at the crack of dawn, not hanging out in an alley trying to score benzos.”
Sara pressed her lips together. She took a deep breath. He watched her nostrils flare. “You know what, Jeffrey? This isn’t my job anymore.”
“What job?”
“I’m not the person you talk through cases with. I’m not your hinky whisperer. I’m not going to tell you how to neutralize Kevin Blake. It’s no longer my job to be the emotional scaffolding that holds up your life.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I don’t have to listen to you, or worry about you, or help you, or even look at you.” Sara jabbed her finger into the desk. “Your mother’s birthday is tomorrow. Did you remember?”
“Shit,” he hissed.
“The florist closes at four and they don’t do same-day delivery, so unless you want her sobbing on the phone, you’d better call them right now before you forget.”
Jeffrey looked at his watch. He had five hours. He wasn’t going to forget. “That’s one thing. I never asked you to—”
“Did you remember Possum and Nell’s seventeenth anniversary is next month?” Sara apparently did. “Last time we were there, you promised them you’d drive over for the party. And that you’d write a toast. You also promised Jared you’d show him how to throw a spiral. And you need a flu shot. The titers on your vaccines should be measured. God knows you should be tested for STDs. You’re past due for a physical. You want more blood pressure medication? You need to make an appointment with your GP before your script runs out.”
“I know all of this,” he lied. “I’ve already made appointments. I’ve got the speech on my laptop.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
“How about you, Sara? Can we talk about how screwed up you are for a change?” His knees banged the desk as he leaned forward. “How about this new guy you’ve been running around Atlanta with? Parker? That’s not a man’s name. That’s a mechanical pencil you get from your grandfather.”
She laughed. “Wow, you really got me there.”
Jeffrey was going to get her if it was the last thing he did. “You look like shit right now. How about that? Did you even brush your hair today? I can tell you’re hungover. You probably haven’t slept in a week. You’re barely hanging on. I’m trying to talk to you like an adult about—”
“Jeffrey.” Her throat seemed to grip the word. Sara never yelled when she was mad. Her anger always hissed out in a furious whisper. “Get out of my office.”
“Get your ass off your shoulders.” He slammed his hand on the desk. She had no right to be angry with him right now. “Jesus, Sara. I was trying to talk to you about a case and you blew it up into this—”
“I’m not the coroner. I’m not your sounding board. You damn well made sure I’m not your wife.”
He forced out a laugh. “I’m not the one who filed for a divorce.”
“No, you’re just the one who kept lying to me when I asked why you were staying out late, why you suddenly had to go outside to take phone calls, why you changed your email password, why you turned the notifications off on your phone, why you put a privacy screen on your laptop.” He could see her throat straining. “You made me think I was going crazy. You humiliated me in front of the entire town. And you still keep lying about—”
“I made one mistake. One.”
“One.” The word came out more as a sharp breath. No matter what he said, she refused to believe it was just one stupid mistake. “It’s been an entire year and you still can’t tell me the truth.”
“You know what, sweetheart? Here’s the truth: I’m not your husband anymore.” He stood up to leave. “I don’t have to listen to this shit, either.”
“Then go.”
He wasn’t going to let her have the last word. “You did things, too, Sara.”
She held open her arms, inviting him to take his best shot.
“How about spending a Sunday in bed with your husband instead of rushing off to have lunch with your family? How about telling your mom not to drop by unannounced six days a week? How about telling your dad to stop coming in behind me and finishing projects I can finish in my own damn time? How about not telling your sister every detail of our sex life? How about for once, just once in our entire marriage, putting my needs, my feelings, ahead of every member of your god damn family?”
She started riffling the desk drawers, scattering papers and office supplies onto the floor.
Jeffrey stared at the mess. This was like the car, where she went crazy and tore up her stuff instead of his. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for this.” She tossed a calculator onto her desk. “I need help counting up all the fucks I don’t give about your feelings.”
His jaw locked down so tight that he could feel his pulse throbbing in his face. “You can shove that calculator up your tight ass.”
“And you can go fuck yourself.”
“I’ve got plenty of women who can do that for me.”
“No shit, cocksucker.”
“Fuck you.”
Sara’s response got lost in the bang of Jeffrey sliding back the pocket door so hard that the doorjamb busted open. Wood splintered. Pictures fluttered through the air. In the hall, he ran into a wall of white—nurses, physician’s assistants, Dr. Barney in his lab coat—gathered around the nurse’s station. They all looked at him in disgust, because Sara was so fucking strategic that only his side of the argument had carried out into the hall.
This wasn’t a divorce. It was Carousel from Logan’s Run.
Jeffrey’s shoes squeaked as he walked up the hallway. His wet socks bunched around his ankles. He felt like steam was coming out of his head. He shouldered open the door. The storm still raged outside. Lightning cracked the sky. The clouds were as black as his mood.
He looked for his umbrella. It was in the middle of the parking lot. The rod was bent. Jeffrey walked out into the driving rain. He snatched the umbrella off the ground. His phone started to ring. He ignored it, the muscles in his arm tensing as he tried to force open the canopy.
“Shit!” Jeffrey hurled the useless umbrella toward the closed door. Rain pelted the top of his head. He trudged toward the driveway. He glanced at Sara’s car, but he wasn’t so far gone that he was going to give her the satisfaction of doing something stupid.
He looked back at the umbrella. He looked at the car.
His phone rang again.
He grabbed it out of his pocket. “Jesus, what?”
There was a hesitation. A slight intake of breath. He could tell it was Lena without looking at the caller ID.
He demanded, “What, Lena? What do you want?”
“Chief?” She was still hesitant in a way that made him want to spike his phone into the ground. He could see her across the street. She was standing inside the glass door at the front of the police station. “Chief?”
“You know I’m here, Lena. You can see me through the damn window. What is it?”
“The girl—” She stopped herself. “The other girl. The student.”
“Have you forgotten how to use adjectives?”
“She’s missing,” Lena said. “Leslie Truong. The witness who found Beckey Caterino in the woods. She never made it to the nurse’s station. She hasn’t been to her dorm or class. We can’t find her anywhere.”
Atlanta
6
Will drove in silence while Faith transcribed details from Daryl Nesbitt’s newspaper clippings into her notebook. He could hear her ballpoint pen scratching the paper. She liked to circle important words. The noise grated like sandpaper on teeth. He yearned for a distraction, but by detente, they never played the radio in the car. Faith was not going to listen to Bruce Springsteen. Will was not going to listen to *NSYNC.
Except for the occasional huh, Faith seemed content with the prolonged silence. Will’s brain kept churning up Faith-centric conversation starters—So, how are things with Emma’s father? Are stay-at-home-moms and working moms really like the Bloods and the Crips? What are the words to “Baby Shark”?—anything to save him from the rabbit hole of analyzing every single word that Sara had uttered to him in the last hour.
Not that there was a lot of raw data. Over the course of three brief conversations, his funny, articulate girlfriend was suddenly talking in a code that Alan Turing couldn’t break. Back at the prison, Sara hadn’t technically hung up on Will when he had called her from the bathroom, but the exchange had ended abruptly enough to send Will running through the halls like a lunatic. He was lucky the COs hadn’t shot him in the back. Then Sara had basically shot him in the face.
Salad?
McDonald’s?