Mark spoke to Jeffrey, and his voice had more authority to it. The kid who had broken down moments ago was gone. The surly teenager was back. "What else?"
"Jenny liked to study?" Jeffrey asked.
Mark shrugged.
Lena said, "Was she interested in other cultures, other religions?"
"What the fuck for?" Mark countered angrily. "It's not like we're ever gonna get out of this fucking town."
"That's a no, then?" Lena asked.
Mark pursed his lips, almost as if he was going to blow a kiss, then said, "Nope."
Jeffrey crossed his arms over his chest, taking back over. "Around Christmas, you stopped being friends with Jenny. Why?"
"Got tired of her," he shrugged.
"Who else did Jenny hang around with?"
"Me," Mark said. "Lacey. That was it."
"She didn't have other friends?"
"No," Mark answered. "And we weren't really even her friends." He laughed lightly. "She was all alone, I guess. Isn't that sad, Chief Tolliver?"
Jeffrey stared at Mark, not answering.
"If you don't have any more questions," Mark began, "I'd like you to go now."
"Do you know Dr. Linton?" Jeffrey asked.
He shrugged. "Sure."
"I want you at the children's clinic tomorrow by ten o'clock to give that blood sample." Jeffrey pointed his finger at Mark. "Don't make me come looking for you."
Mark stood, wiping his palms on his pants. "Yeah, what-ever." He looked down at Lena, who was still on the floor. She was at his crotch level, and he smiled, more like a sneer, when he noticed this.
Mark raised one eyebrow at her, his lips slightly parted in the same sly smile he had given her before, then left the room.
Monday
Chapter Eight
Around six o'clock in the morning, Jeffrey rolled out of bed and fell onto the floor. He sat up, groaning at the pain in his head as he tried to remember where he was. The trip to Sylacauga had taken him six long hours last night, and he had tumbled into the twin bed without even bothering to take off his clothes. His dress shirt was wrinkled, the sleeves pushed up well past his elbows. His pants were creased in four different places.
Jeffrey yawned as he looked around his boyhood room. His mother had not changed a thing since he had left for Auburn over twenty years ago. A poster of a cherry-red 1967 Mustang convertible with a white top was on the back of the door. Six pairs of worn-out sneakers were on the floor of the closet. His football jersey from Sylacauga High was tacked to the wall over the bed. A box of cassette tapes was stacked high under the room's only window.
He lifted the mattress and saw a stack of Playboys, that he had started stockpiling at the age of fourteen. A much-loved copy of Penthouse, purloined from the local store down the street, was still on the top. Jeffrey sat back on his heels, thumbing through the magazine. There had been a time in his life when he had known every page of the Penthouse by heart, from the cartoons to the articles to the lovely ladies in provocative poses that had been the focus of his sexual fantasies for months on end.
"Jesus," he sighed, thinking some of the women were probably old enough to be grandmothers now. Christ, some of them were probably eligible for social security.
Jeffrey groaned as he slid the mattress back into place, trying not to push the magazines out on the other side. He wondered if his mother had ever found his stash. Wondered, too, what she must have thought of it. Knowing May Tolliver, she had ignored them, or made up an excuse that allowed her to block out the fact that her son had enough pornography under his mattress to wallpaper the entire house. His mother was good at not seeing things she did not want to see, but then most mothers were.
Jeffrey thought about Dottie Weaver, and how she had missed all the signs with her daughter. He put his hand to his stomach, thinking about Jenny Weaver standing in the parking lot at Skatie's. The image was like a Polaroid etched into his eyelids, and he could see the little girl standing there, the gun in her hand trained on Mark Patterson. Mark was more defined in Jeffrey's memory now, and he could pick out details about the boy: the way he stood with his arms out to his sides, the way his knees bent a little as he stared at Jenny. The whole time, Mark had never really looked at Jeffrey. Even after Jeffrey had shot her, Mark had stood there, staring down at the ground where she lay.
Jeffrey rubbed his eyes, trying to push out this image. He let his gaze travel back to the Mustang, taking it in the way he had every morning of his teenage life. The car had represented so much to him when he was growing up, chief among these things being freedom. As a teenager, he had sometimes sat in bed, his eyes closed, imagining getting in that car and taking off across country. Jeffrey had wanted so much to get away, to leave Sylacauga and his mother's house, to be something other than his father's son.
Jimmy Tolliver had been a petty thief in every sense of the term. He never stole big, which was a point in his favor, because he always got caught. Jeffrey's mother liked to say that Jimmy couldn't break wind in a crowded building without getting caught. He just had that look of guilt about him, and he liked to talk. Jimmy's mouth was his biggest downfall; he couldn't stand not taking credit for the jobs he pulled. Jimmy Tolliver was the only person who was surprised when he had ended up dying in prison, serving out a life term for armed robbery.
By the time he was ten years old, Jeffrey knew practically every man on the Sylacauga police force by name, because at some time or another, one or all of them had come to the house, looking for Jimmy. To their credit, the patrol cops knew Jeffrey, too, and they always made a point of taking him aside whenever they saw him. At the time, being singled out by the police had annoyed Jeffrey. He had considered it harassment. Now, as a policeman himself, Jeffrey knew the cops had been taking time with him as insurance. They did not want to waste their time chasing down another Tolliver for stealing lawn mowers and weed whackers out of his neighbors' yards.
Jeffrey owed these cops a lot, not least of all his career. Watching the fear in his father's eyes that last time the cops had come to the house and slapped the cuffs on Jimmy, Jeffrey had known then and there that he wanted to be a cop.
Jimmy Tolliver had been a drunk, and a mean one at that. To the town, he was a bumbling crook and a sloppy drunk, to Jeffrey and his mother, he was a violent asshole who terrified his family.
Jeffrey stretched his hands up to the ceiling, his palms flat against the warm wood. As he padded to the bathroom, he noticed that even his socks were wrinkled. The heel had slid around sometime during the night. Jeffrey was balancing on one foot, trying to twist it back, when he heard his cell phone ringing in the other room.
"Dammit," he cursed, bumping his shoulder into the wall as he turned the corner to his room. The house seemed so much smaller now than it had when he was growing up.
He picked up the phone on the fourth ring, just before the voice mail came on. "Hello?"
"Jeff?" Sara asked, a bit of concern in her voice.
He let it linger in his ear before saying, "Hey, babe."
She laughed at the name. "Less than ten hours in Alabama and you're calling me 'babe'?" She waited a beat. "Are you alone?"
He felt irritated, because he knew part of her was not joking. "Of course I'm alone," he shot back. "Jesus Christ, Sara."
"I meant your mother," she told him, though he could tell from her lack of conviction that she was covering.
He let it pass. "No, they kept her overnight in the hospital." He sat on the bed, trying to get his sock to twist back into place. "She fell down somehow. Broke her foot."
"Did she fall at home?" Sara asked, something more than curiosity in her tone. He knew what she was getting at, and it was the same reason Jeffrey had come to Alabama himself in the middle of a case instead of just making a phone call. He wanted to see if his mother's drinking was finally getting out of hand. May Tolliver had always been what was politely called a functional alcoholic. If she had crossed the line into hopeless drunk, Jeffrey would have to do something. He had no idea what this would be, but knew instinctively that it would not be easy.