Broken (Will Trent 4)

Will didn’t wait to see if she followed as he walked toward the opposite end of the lot. He talked as he made his way to the car, his leather briefcase swinging gently at his side. “I’m curious about Allison Spooner. You said she’s from Alabama?”

“Yes.”

“And she’s a student at Grant Tech?”

Lena was careful with her answer. “She’s registered at the school.”

Will turned to her. “So, that means she’s a student?”

“It means she’s registered. We haven’t talked to her teachers yet. We don’t know if she was actively attending classes. We get a lot of calls from parents this time of year wondering why they’re not getting report cards.”

He asked her again, “Do you think Allison Spooner dropped out?”

She tried a new strategy. “I think that I’m not going to tell you something unless I know it’s the absolute truth.”

He gave one of his quick nods. “Fair enough.”

Lena waited for another question, another insinuation. Will just kept walking, his mouth closed. If he thought this new technique was going to break her, he was dead wrong. Lena had been dealing with silent disapproval her entire life. She had made an art out of ignoring it.

She tucked her head down against the cold. Her mind kept going back to her earlier conversation with Will. She had been so furious about him being in Jeffrey’s office that she hadn’t really paid attention to what he was saying at first. But then he had pulled out Allison’s wallet and she had seen that the third photograph was missing.

The picture showed Allison sitting beside a boy who had his arm around her waist. An older woman sat on her left, some distance between them. They were all on a bench outside the student center. Lena had stared at the photo long enough to remember the details. The boy was around Allison’s age. He had been wearing the hood of his sweatshirt pulled down low on his head but she could tell he had brown hair and eyes. A smattering of a goatee was on his weak chin. He was chubby the way most of the guys at Grant Tech tended to be, from too many days spent in classrooms and nights wasted in front of video games.

The woman in the photograph was obviously from the poor part of town. She was in her forties, maybe older. Past a certain age, it was difficult to tell with hard-looking women. The good news was that they stopped aging. The bad news was that they already looked ninety. Every line on her face said she was a smoker. Her bleached-blonde hair was so dry it looked more like straw.

Also missing from evidence was Tommy’s cell phone. Frank had handed it to Lena in the street. He’d found it in Tommy’s back pocket when he frisked him before putting him into the back of the squad car. She had sealed the phone in a plastic bag, written out the details, and logged it into evidence.

And at some point last night, both the photo from Allison’s wallet and Tommy’s phone had gone missing.

There was only one person who could’ve hidden the evidence, and that was Frank. Marla said he’d gone through her files. He had probably doctored the 911 transcript, too. But why? Both the picture and the call brought up the possibility of Allison having a boyfriend. Maybe Frank was trying to track down the kid before Will Trent found him. Frank had told Lena that they both should stick to the truth, or at least a close version of it. Why was he going behind her back and looking for another suspect?

Lena wiped her eyes with her hand. The wind was cutting, making her nose run, her eyes water. She had to carve out ten, fifteen minutes alone so she could think this through. Will’s presence made it impossible for her to do anything but worry about the next question that would come out of his mouth.

“Ready?” Will asked. They had reached the Porsche. The car was an older model than Lena thought. There was no remote to unlock the door. Will did the honors, then handed her the key.

Lena felt a new wave of nervousness wash over her. “What if I crash this thing?”

“I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t.” He reached in and tucked his briefcase behind the front seat.

Lena couldn’t move. This felt like a trap but she couldn’t see the reason.

“Is there a problem?” Will asked.

Lena gave in. She climbed into the bucket seat, which was more like a recliner. With her feet stretched toward the pedals, the back of her calves were only a few inches off the floorboard.

Will opened the passenger door. She asked, “You don’t have a car from the job?”

“My boss wanted me to get here as soon as possible.” He had to let the seat back before he got into the passenger’s side of the car. “It adjusts on the front,” he told Lena. She reached down and dragged herself closer to the steering wheel. Will’s legs were about ten feet longer than hers. Lena was practically pressed into the steering wheel by the time her feet found the clutch and gas.

For his part, Will couldn’t get his seat right. He pushed it to the end of the track, then cranked it down as low as it would go so his head wouldn’t hit the roof. Finally, he folded himself into the car like a piece of origami. She waited for him to buckle in, chancing a look at him. He was fairly average except for his height. He was lean, but his shoulders were broad, muscled, like he spent a lot of time at the gym. His nose had obviously been broken at some point in his life. Faint scars were on his face, the sort of damage you got from fighting with your fists.

No, he definitely was not Amanda Wagner’s second string.

“All right,” Will said, finally settling into the seat.

She reached toward the ignition, but there wasn’t one.

“It’s on the other side.”

She found the ignition on the left-hand side of the steering wheel.

Will explained, “It’s from Le Mans racing. So you can start the engine with one hand while you change the gears with the other.”

She was extremely right-handed and it took a few tries before she managed to get the key to turn. The engine roared to life. The seat vibrated underneath her. She could feel the clutch pushing back against the ball of her foot.

Will stopped her. “Can you give her a few minutes to warm up?”

Lena took her foot off the pedal. She stared across the street. He’d parked on the far side of the lot, the nose of the car facing out. She had a clear view to the children’s clinic across the way. Sara’s clinic. She wondered if he had parked here on purpose. He seemed to be very deliberate about everything he did. Or maybe her paranoia was such that she couldn’t watch his chest rise and fall without thinking it was part of some master plan to trip her up.

Will asked one of his random questions. “What do you think about the 911 call?”

She told him the truth. “It bothers me that it came from a blocked number.”

“She called in a fake suicide. Why?”

Lena shook her head. The caller was the last thing on her mind right now. “Tommy might have talked to her. She could be a co-worker. An accomplice. A jealous girlfriend.”

“Tommy didn’t strike me as a player.”

No, he hadn’t. During the interrogation, Lena had asked him to be explicit because she wasn’t sure he really knew what sex was.

Will asked, “Did Tommy say anything about dating anyone?”

She shook her head.

“We can ask around. At the very least, the girl who called in the fake suicide knew something wasn’t right. She was obviously laying down a foundation for Tommy’s defense.”