Sara wanted to believe this, but with everything she had learned about the case lately, she wasn't too sure.
Brock lightened his tone. "You take care now," he said. "Best to your mama and them."
Sara wished him the same and hung up the phone. She pressed the button for a new line and called Jeffrey.
Chapter Fourteen
Lena tried not to make it too obvious that she was listening to Jeffrey's telephone conversation with Sara Linton. This was incredibly difficult to do, as they were both in the front seat of Jeffrey's car. Lena looked out the window, feigning a casualness she did not feel. Part of her was still struck by what had happened with Mark only hours before. Time would only tell if he would make it. Oxygen had been cut off to his brain for some time, and until he woke up from the coma, there was no way to predict how much damage had been done.
Lena glanced at Jeffrey as he told Sara what Mark had said about his relationship with Grace Patterson. Whatever Sara said in response was brief and to the point, because Jeffrey agreed with her immediately.
"I'll see you tonight," Jeffrey said, then replaced the phone in the cradle. He started in on Lena immediately. "I told you not to be alone with Mark," he said.
"I know," Lena responded, and started to tell him again why she had let Brad leave the trailer. He stopped her, holding up his hand.
"I'm only going to say this once, Lena," Jeffrey began, and it seemed like he had been wanting to say this for a while. "You're not the boss here."
"I know that."
"Don't interrupt me," he ordered, cutting his eyes at her. "I've been doing this job a hell of a lot longer than you, and I tell you to do things a certain way because I know what I'm doing."
She opened her mouth to agree, but then thought better of it.
"Being a detective gives you some autonomy, but at the end of the day you take your orders from me." He looked at her, as if anticipating she'd argue. "If I can't trust you to follow simple orders, why should I keep you working for me?"
Obviously, it was her turn to speak, but she couldn't come up with anything to say.
"I want you to think about this, Lena. I know you like your job and I know you're good at it when you decide to be, but after what happened…" He shook his head, as if that wasn't right. "Even before what happened. You've got a problem taking orders, and that makes you more dangerous to me than the crooks."
Lena felt the sting from his words and rushed to defend herself. "Mark wouldn't have confided in me if Brad had been there."
"He might not have tried to take his life, either," Jeffrey said. He was quiet, staring out at the road as he drove. He sighed, then said, "That wasn't fair."
Lena was silent.
"Mark probably would've found a way to do something like this. He's a very troubled kid. It wasn't your fault."
She nodded, not knowing whether what he was saying was true or not. At least he was trying to comfort her, which is a hell of a lot more than she had done with him when they had talked about his shooting Jenny Weaver.
"And it's not just Mark. Have you made an appointment with a therapist yet?"
She shook her head.
Jeffrey said, " Lena, I hate to say this now, but there never seems to be a good time." He paused, as if making sure to word this carefully. "You need to think about whether or not you want to be a cop anymore."
She nodded, biting the tip of her tongue so that she wouldn't start crying. How could she not be a cop? If she wasn't a police detective, what was she? Certainly not a sister; barely a woman. Lena wasn't even sure some days if she was a human being.
"You're a good cop," he said.
She nodded again, resting her head against her hand, staring out the side window so he wouldn't see her face. Her throat felt like it was closing up as she strained not to cry. She hated herself for being so weak, and the thought of breaking down in front of Jeffrey was enough to keep her from sobbing like a girl.
"We'll talk when this case is over," Jeffrey told her, and his voice was reassuring, but it didn't help. "I want to help you, Lena, but I can't help you if you don't want to be helped."
It sounded like Hank's A.A. bullshit, and Lena had had enough of that to last her a lifetime. She cleared her throat and said, "Okay," still staring out the window.
Jeffrey was silent as he drove, and she didn't speak again until she noticed that he missed the turnoff heading back into town and the station.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Dottie Weaver's house," he said. "She hasn't picked up the body at the morgue."
"It's been a while," Lena said, surreptitiously wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "Do you think something's wrong with her?"
"I don't know," Jeffrey told her, his jaw working.
"Do you think she's done something?" Lena asked. "Like Mark?"
He gave her a curt nod, and she did not push it.
Jeffrey pointed up the road, saying, " Randolph Street is up here, right?"
"Yes," Lena confirmed, and Jeffrey took the turn onto Randolph. The driveways were few and far between, most of the houses set back from the road and resting on three to four acres each. They were in an older section of Grant, built back before people started throwing cheap houses on top of each other. Jeffrey braked the car in front of a gray mailbox that was open in the front, mail stacked so tight someone would have to use a crowbar to get it out.
"This is it," he said. He backed up the car and turned into a tree-lined driveway. If he noticed the four copies of the Grant Observer wrapped in plastic bags at the head of the drive, he did not say.
The Weaver home was farther back from the road than Lena would have guessed, and a few seconds passed before a small ranch house came into view. A second level had been added at some point, and the bottom of the house did not really match the top.
"Do you see a car?" Jeffrey asked, stopping in front of an open carport.
Lena looked around, wondering why he had asked a question with such an obvious answer. "No."
They both got out of the car, and Lena walked around the perimeter of the house, checking every window on the first floor. Either the curtains or the blinds were drawn on each one, and she could not see inside. There was a double door leading to what was probably the basement, but it was locked tight. The small windows around the foundation had been painted black from the inside.
As she circled back around the house, she could hear Jeffrey knocking on the front door, calling, "Mrs. Weaver?"
Lena stood at the bottom of the porch steps, wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of her arm. "I couldn't see anything. All the curtains are drawn." She told him about the basement and the blackened windows.
Jeffrey glanced around the yard, and she could sense how anxious he was. Dottie Weaver had not bothered to get her newspapers or mail for a while. She was divorced and her daughter had just been killed. Maybe she had felt there wasn't a lot to go on living for.
Jeffrey asked, "Did you check the windows?"
"They're all locked tight," she reported.
"Even that broken one?"
Lena got his meaning. As law officers, they needed a damn good reason to go into Weaver's house without a warrant. A bad feeling was not good enough to go on. A broken window was.
She asked, "You mean the broken one in the basement?"
He gave her a curt nod.
"What if an alarm goes off?"
"Then we'll call the police," he said, walking down the steps.
Lena would have broken the window herself, but she appreciated that Jeffrey was trying to keep her out of this gray area of the law as much as he could. She leaned against the porch railing, waiting for the sound of broken glass. It came about a minute later, and then several more minutes passed with nothing further from Jeffrey. She was about to go around to the back of the house when she heard his footsteps inside.