“Did you notice them?”
“The body was in the water for a long time. I’m not sure what I saw except for the knife wound in the neck.”
The detail bothered him, mostly because it was the first point where Frank Wallace’s story didn’t dovetail with Lena’s. “Have you found Spooner’s car?”
“She doesn’t have one.”
“That strikes me as odd.”
“It’s a college town. Kids walk everywhere or drive their scooters.” Lena shrugged. “If they need to go somewhere, they can usually bum a ride.”
“Could Allison have a car without you knowing about it?”
“Not at the school. They’ll tow you if you take up two spaces. They’re really good about policing the campus. And, there aren’t a lot of places around town to ditch a car, either. I can put out a BOLO at the morning briefing if you want, but it’s a dead end. This isn’t Atlanta. If people see abandoned cars, they call the police.”
Will studied Lena, trying to read any deceit. “What about Allison’s boss at the diner? Have you talked to him?”
“Lionel Harris. Frank said he talked to him last night. He doesn’t know anything.”
Either Frank had lied or Lena was making things up as she went along.
Will asked, “How does Mr. Harris look for the murder?”
“He’s got one leg and he’s older than Jesus.”
“I’ll take that as an unlikely.” Will opened the red folder. The photocopy of Tommy Braham’s confession was on top. He saw a flash of recognition in Lena’s eyes. “Take me through it.”
“Which part?”
He knew she was expecting him to get straight to the point-the stabbing, what went down outside the garage. He went the opposite direction, hoping to throw her off. “Let’s start with you bringing Tommy Braham into the station and work our way forward. Did he say anything in the car?”
“No.”
Will hadn’t yet seen the booking pictures or the crime scene photos Sara had taken of Tommy Braham in the cell, but he knew that a cop had been stabbed while two other able-bodied officers were at the scene. He hazarded a guess about what happened next. “What condition was Tommy in at this time?”
She stared at him blankly.
“Did he fall down a couple of times during the arrest?”
Again, she took her time. “You’ll have to ask Frank about that. I was tending to Brad.”
“You saw Tommy in the car. What kind of state was he in?”
Lena pulled a spiral-bound notebook out of her back pocket. She slowly flipped to the pages she wanted. Will saw the paper was taped back into the notebook and assumed these were the originals Sara had photocopied last night.
Lena cleared her throat. “I brought in the suspect, Thomas Adam Braham, at approximately eight-thirty yesterday morning.” Lena scrutinized him. “You’re not going to take notes?”
“Why, do you want to let me borrow your pen?”
Her composure cracked just a tiny bit, and Will saw what he had been looking for from the minute Lena walked into the room. No matter what she thought about Tommy Braham, she was upset about his death. Not upset because it might get her into trouble, but upset because he was a human being who had been in her care.
Will said, “I’ve already read your notes, Detective. Tell me the parts that aren’t on the pages.”
She started picking at the Band-Aid.
“Who did the death notifications?”
“I did.”
“On both Spooner and Braham?”
She nodded. “Elba, where Allison’s from, is a small town. The detective I talked to went to school with her. He says her mother died eight years ago. The father’s unknown. There’s an aunt, Sheila McGhee, but she’s not home much. She works for a crew that’s remodeling roach motels along the Panhandle. The detective’s going to try to track her down. I left a message on her answering machine, but she won’t hear it until she gets home or calls to check her messages.”
She was actually sounding like a detective now. Will asked, “No cell phone?”
“Not that I can find.”
“Was there an address book in Allison’s apartment?”
“We didn’t have time to do a search.” Her tone became clipped again. “A lot was going on yesterday. My partner was bleeding to death in the street.”
“I’d like to know when Ms. McGhee returns your call.”
She nodded.
“What about Tommy’s relations?”
“There’s just his dad, Gordon. I talked to him early this morning, told him what happened.”
“How did he take it?”
“No father wants to hear that his son’s confessed to murder.”
“How did he take the suicide?”
“About how you’d expect.” Lena looked down at her notes, though Will could tell she was buying time to collect herself. “Gordon’s driving up from Florida right now. I don’t know how long that’ll take. Seven, maybe eight hours.”
Will wondered where Frank Wallace was in all of this, and why the hardest parts of the case had fallen to Lena. He asked, “Did you know Allison Spooner?”
“Half the town did. She worked at the diner down the street.”
“Did you know her?”
“I never met her.”
“You don’t go to the diner?”
“Why does that matter?” She wasn’t looking for an answer. “Tommy laid it all out. You’ve got his confession right in front of you. He said that he wanted to have sex with her. She didn’t. So he killed her.”
“How long did it take for him to confess?”
“He dicked around for about an hour, then I got it out of him.”
“Did he offer an alibi? Initially, I mean.”
“He said he was at the vet. He’s got this dog, Pippy. She swallowed a sock or something. Tommy took her to the emergency vet over on Conford. The office staff can’t vouch for him being there the entire time.”
“Does he have a car?”
“A green Chevy Malibu. It’s at the shop. Tommy said the starter’s been acting up. He dropped the keys in the lockbox at Earnshaw’s yesterday morning.”
Will hadn’t been expecting that. “Earnshaw?”
“Sara’s uncle.”
“Is there security footage of the lot?”
“No, but I called the garage. The car is there.” She shrugged. “Tommy could’ve left it there after he killed Allison.”
“Have you searched the car?”
“I planned on doing that today.” Her tone indicated that Will was the major obstacle standing between her and doing her job.
Will didn’t back down. “How did Tommy know Allison?”
“She rented space from his dad-a converted garage apartment.” Lena looked at her watch.
“What was Tommy like?”
“Stupid,” she told him. “Slow in his thinking. I’m sure Sara’s already told you all about it.”
“According to Dr. Linton, Tommy’s IQ was around eighty. He wasn’t bright, but he held down a job at the bowling alley. He was a good kid. Good except for the trouble he’d been in lately.”
“I’d call murder a bit more than trouble.”
“I was referring to the incident reports.”
She hid her surprise well, but he could see the flicker of a question in her eyes.
“There are three reports detailing altercations over the last month. Mrs. Simms was kind enough to provide them.” She remained silent, so he asked, “You knew about them, right?”
Still, Lena didn’t respond. Will slid the incident reports across the desk so she could see them.
She skimmed the summaries. “Small problems. He obviously had a temper.”
“Who told you to arrest Tommy for Allison’s murder?”
“Frank-” She looked like she wanted to take back the word. “Frank and I discussed it. It was a joint decision.”
At least he knew what she looked like when she was lying. The bad news was that her lying face looked a lot like her honest one. “When did you first hear there was a body in the lake?”
“Brad called me around three yesterday morning. I woke everybody else up, started the investigation.”