A Good Killing (6 page)

Cooper smiled and shook his head as they drove off.

Anna said, “You let teenagers drive your pickup?”

“They’re good kids. Plus I can’t drive it anyway.”

Because of his prosthetic leg? Anna remembered skinny thirteen-year-old Cooper driving his dad’s huge John Deere tractor around the fields. Driving at a young age was a farm thing. She had a hard time picturing Detroit as one big farm, despite all the empty land.

He was several steps ahead, opening the back door to his house. Inside, the place was a testament to glorious architecture fallen on hard times. Tall ceilings were spotted with water stains. Beautiful woodwork abutted peeling wallpaper and crumbling plaster. Stained-glass windows remained where bars covered them; anything else of value on the exterior, Anna guessed, had been stolen. A majestic curving staircase dominated the foyer, dangerously missing its iron handrail, which had probably been taken for scrap. The foyer floor was covered in a white tarp, on which stood a stepladder, tools, and paint cans.

“Sorry for the mess,” Cooper said. “I’m renovating. Slowly.”

“You’ve been here, like, five years,” Jody said.

“You should’ve seen it five years ago.”

Jody was holding her wrist.

“Does it still hurt?” Anna asked. Jody nodded. “Let’s go to a doctor and get it looked at.”

“No, it’s fine. Just needs a little ice.”

Cooper led them to a kitchen, which looked like it hadn’t been updated since the days of Ozzie and Harriet. He loaded ice into a Ziploc bag and handed it to Jody, who put it on her wrist.

“Let me look at it,” Cooper said.

Jody held out her arm, and Cooper examined it gently. “You’ve got a sprain,” he said. “What happened?”

“No,” Anna said. “I don’t want Jody saying anything that you could be forced to repeat in court, Cooper.”

“You’re such a lawyer.” Jody rolled her eyes. “I slipped in the shower.”

“Uh-huh,” Cooper and Anna said at the same time.

Cooper got out a first-aid kit and wrapped Jody’s wrist in an Ace bandage. His calloused hands moved with gentle expertise. Anna guessed he’d learned some first aid in the army.

“Try to keep it still.” He finished wrapping Jody’s wrist. “You’ll be fine.”

He went to the fridge and pulled out three beers, then led the women to the living room. It was a cavernous, wood-trimmed space that dwarfed the mismatched furniture. A marble fireplace, taller than Anna, dominated the far wall. A stack of apple crates against the side wall served as bookshelves, filled with hundreds of novels and agricultural textbooks. Anna went over and looked at the books. She knew Cooper had majored in agriculture at Michigan State, which had one of the best programs in the country. Looking at the textbooks—about biotech, veterinary medicine, ecology, and the environment—Anna appreciated that modern farming was about much more than sticking seeds in dirt.

Cooper handed each sister a bottle of beer. Anna twisted off the top and looked at the label:
Detroit Doppelbock
. She took a sip of the brown ale, which was malty and smooth. “This is good,” she said.

“Remind me to take you to the Detroit Brewing Company,” Cooper said. “They rehabbed this great old building downtown and have a restaurant and microbrewery there now.”

Jody twisted open her beer and drained the whole thing. She set the bottle on the coffee table, which was a giant tree stump that had been sanded and polished so the growth rings shone. Her bandaged hand covered her mouth as she belched. “Excuse me.”

“Impressive,” Cooper said, handing Jody the third beer. “I’m gonna make dinner. Stay here, relax. You’ve both had long days.”

After he left, Anna and her sister sat looking at each other, sizing each other up. Anna spoke first.

“I think you need to hire a lawyer.”

Jody shook her head. “Hire a lawyer and everyone automatically thinks you’re guilty.”

“The police are searching your house. They already think you committed a crime.”

“Well, they’re not going to find anything there. The only criminal activity in my house last night was a criminal lack of foreplay—but I wasn’t planning on pressing charges.”

Her sister grinned, waiting for the laugh. Anna was too upset to give it. Jody’s affect was all wrong. “Coach Fowler is dead, Jo. Aren’t you upset?”

“Of course I’m upset. Don’t get me wrong. You know I’ve always laughed when I’m nervous. It’s terrible. I was just with him, and now he’s gone.”

Anna looked at her sister, trying to figure out what was going on in Jody’s head. Anna decided to stick around until this was sorted out. If Jody wouldn’t hire a lawyer, she would need someone who could give her legal advice.

For dinner, Cooper made pasta tossed with fluffy white chunks of mozzarella and fresh tomatoes and arugula from his garden. Afterward, they played euchre, betting their spare change on the card game. Jody soon amassed a pile of coins. She also drank three more beers, which Anna noticed but didn’t comment on. Their father had been an alcoholic. Jody had received the scar on her cheek during the final, and most cataclysmic, of his whiskey-fueled rages.

The sky outside became blacker than any sky in D.C. Anna went to the foyer and looked out the front windows. Only one of the ten streetlights on Cooper’s block worked.

“You need some lighting out there.”

Cooper came and stood next to her. “Yeah. The cool thing is: it’s one of the few cities in America where you can see the stars. I got a telescope last summer—”

A shot rang out, and Anna was thrown to the floor. Cooper lay on top of her, his hands covering her head. Her cheek pressed into the white tarp. She could feel the length of Cooper’s body covering hers. For a moment, they both were perfectly still. Silence followed, then the sound of Jody and Sparky running over.

“What the hell?” Jody said.

The dog began poking his snout persistently into Cooper’s thigh. Cooper glanced at the dog, and then down at Anna, and
seemed to shake himself out of some kind of trance. He sat up looking embarrassed.

Anna pushed herself up to sitting and looked around for whatever was attacking them. “What was that? A gunshot?”

Cooper took a deep breath. “Maybe. Or maybe a car backfiring. Hard to say in Detroit. But you probably didn’t need to hit the deck. I’m sorry.”

He stood, held out a hand, and helped Anna to her feet. As she stood, Anna met his eyes. She was reminded of a few cops she’d worked with, guys who’d joined the police force after serving in the military.

“Is it PTSD?” she asked.

Cooper nodded. They went back to the living room, where he pulled out a bag of dog treats and threw one to Sparky. The dog caught it in his mouth. “Good boy.” Cooper sank onto the couch and ran a hand through his dark hair. Anna sat next to him, while Jody went to the fridge. Sparky sat at his feet, and Cooper stroked the dog’s thick white fur.

“What does it do to you?” Anna asked. “Posttraumatic stress disorder?”

“Mine isn’t debilitating, like I’ve seen in some of my friends. But I’m constantly on alert, looking for something to jump out of the corners. I go into code red really quickly. My fight-or-flight instinct is on a hair trigger.”

“That’s probably the only way to live in Detroit,” Jody said. She handed him a fresh bottle of Doppelbock. He smiled and took a swig.

“What was Sparky doing?” Anna asked. The dog tilted his head up at the mention of his name. “I’ve never seen a dog poking someone like that before.”

“He’s a PTSD dog,” Cooper said. “Specially trained to sense when I’m having an episode. There are times when he can tell even before I do. He alerts and lets me know. Sometimes, just realizing that it’s happening is enough for me to be able to take steps to stop it. The group I got him from also says that petting a dog helps alleviate stress.”

Jody rubbed the dog behind his ears. “Good puppy.”

“What happened,” Anna asked softly, “to your leg?”

He looked toward the fireplace, and she regretted asking about something he might not want to talk about. But he turned back to her and spoke in the calm way of someone who has told a story many times and doesn’t mind.

“We were going to set up a checkpoint outside Kandahar. I was riding in a light armored vehicle. I’d just swapped places with a buddy. I was in the sentry position in back, so the top part of my body was sticking out.

“The dirt road was quiet. I remember thinking how peaceful the countryside looked; if you didn’t know there was a war, we could’ve just been a bunch of guys off-roading. A second later, there was an explosion. We rolled over an IED. I got ejected, though I don’t really remember that part.

“When I came to, I was lying in the dust, trying to figure out how I got there. I saw my boot by my head, but I didn’t realize what that meant. The LAV was on fire. I tried to get up and go help the guys inside, and that’s when I realized my leg was gone. Everyone else inside died. I’m the lucky one, I guess.”

“Coop, I’m so sorry.” Anna touched his arm.

“It’s okay. I’m glad you asked. It’s better when people ask. And you should know why I might throw you down to the ground at a moment’s notice.”

“I thought you were just getting kinky with her,” Jody said. “I was like: Go, Cooper!”

“Nah, when I make a move, it’s even less graceful than that.”

Anna suddenly understood his motorcycle. “Is that why you drive a Harley instead of a car?”

He nodded. “I have nightmares about what it was like to die in there. My friends. Trapped. Burning. I have a hard time being in cars now.”

“This is a bad city for that.” Michigan had very little public transportation. Not surprisingly, it was a state where you needed a car to get around.

“I do okay on my bike,” Cooper said.

“What about winter?”

“When it gets too cold, I just stay in. I have an epic soup collection. It’s a good excuse to catch up on my reading.”

Anna shook her head. She pictured him alone here for days at a time, during the darkest, coldest stretches of the year. It was a remarkable life he’d chosen for himself. It took serious fortitude to pull it off—and some serious problems to inspire it. She felt equal measures of admiration and sympathy.

It also reminded her of the old saying “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting some hard battle.” Anyone who’d seen Cooper in the airport this afternoon would think he was a shockingly handsome man in the prime of his life. But he bore deep scars, inside and out, and was trying to heal them by helping a city that was even more badly wounded than he was. She leaned over and gave him a hug. He let her, and she was glad.

That night, Cooper insisted on sleeping on the couch. The sisters shared his king-size bed, which was the only real piece of furniture in his massive bedroom. His house had five bedrooms, each with a fireplace and almost no furniture.

Lying next to her sister, Anna felt like a kid again. After their parents split up, they had moved with their mother into their great-aunt’s house and shared a bed. She and Jody used to sleep like twins in a womb, curled into each other. Their physical closeness had been the most comforting thing in their lives, back then. Anna had an urge to put her arm around her sister now—but couldn’t imagine what the reaction would be. Everything had been so prickly since she arrived.

“Anna?” Jody said softly.

“Yeah?” She could barely make out her sister’s face in the darkness.

“Thanks for coming.”

“Of course, Jo. I’m here for you.”

Anna tentatively reached out and pushed a strand of Jody’s hair out of her eyes. Jody sighed and closed her eyes. Anna kept
stroking her hair until her sister’s breathing came slow and steady. She’d learned from Jack’s daughter that a little patting could go a long way in soothing someone to sleep. Or maybe Jody was just exhausted.

Once her sister was asleep, Anna rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. She wondered what Jack was doing. Probably sleeping, too, in his pretty yellow house. Maybe packing her things into boxes. She wanted to call him and tell him everything that happened today. She wanted to ask his advice, legal and emotional. Mostly, she wanted to cuddle into him and let his steady heartbeat lull her to sleep.

She wondered how long it would take to get used to sleeping without him. She wondered how much trouble her kid sister was in. Sleep did not come easily. She stared up at the ceiling and listened to the strange silence of a ghost town.

11

A
nna woke up before Jody did. The sky was bright, but the city was quiet. She slid out from under the covers, unplugged her cell phone from its charger, and tiptoed down the stairs so her sister could keep sleeping.

Anna knew that the first forty-eight hours of an investigation were crucial: rounding up the evidence, finding witnesses, collecting specimens for DNA testing. If a case wasn’t solved in the first two days, its chances of ever being solved plummeted, so this was always a time of intense police work. Rob Gargaron and his squad would be out there, talking to witnesses and looking for evidence. Anna could just sit back and wait, hoping they never put a case together. But sitting back and waiting wasn’t in her nature.

She hoped there would never be a case against Jody. But the search warrant at Jody’s home suggested otherwise. She had to be prepared. She had to scramble if she was going to keep up with the police.

Anna had never been on the defense side of a case, and she didn’t really know where to start. If she were the prosecutor, the first thing she’d do was look up the criminal history of everyone involved. Here, she was at a disadvantage. She couldn’t use her DOJ databases to do defense work for her sister, and she didn’t have access to any of the local databases. She needed local help.

She sat on the bottom step of Cooper’s big staircase and called the Holly Grove Public Defender’s service. A harried-sounding receptionist answered. Anna explained her situation and asked if she could consult with a lawyer there or borrow their computers to investigate her sister’s case.

“There’s no actual case, though, right?” said the receptionist.

“No one’s been charged. Yet. But my sister’s house was searched by the police yesterday.”