Cop Town (12 page)

He still missed her. When he was growing up in juvie, when he was stuck in the Army, when he was fighting in the jungle, when he was breathing or walking down the street, every day of his life, he missed her.

Maybe that was why Fox was drinking too much. Smoking too much. Watching Kate Murphy too much.

He had never killed a woman before. Sure, he had slapped around a couple when they got out of line. But he had never killed one. Fox didn’t know what was making him hesitate. The evidence against Kate was
clear. Fox had pages and pages in his clipboard. She was a liar. She was a charlatan. She didn’t belong.

So why didn’t he just shoot her?

Dragging it out was not Fox’s style. Quick and painless, that was how he had always done it. He was an executioner, not a murderer.

How it usually worked was like this: The target presented itself. Fox studied it. He tracked it. He kept a detailed log on all the reasons why the target should be eliminated. Or not. Occasionally, after a few weeks of surveillance, he decided that the target should not be removed. There were redeeming qualities, extenuating circumstances. Of course, sometimes the information yielded a definitive yes. In those cases, Fox acted quickly. He studied his clipboard. He picked the right place and time. He shot the target in the head. No muss. No fuss. That’s how it was with rabid animals. You had to take them out fast before they infected other people.

Kate Murphy was not an extenuating circumstance. She embodied the rabid animal. She was the cancer that needed to be cut out. Somewhere deep in her soul, she probably knew this. That was the way most of them were. By the time Fox came around to take care of business, they had already accepted what was coming.

So why wasn’t Fox acting?

There was no point in continuing his surveillance, because he already knew when Kate was with her family, when she was alone, when she was at her most vulnerable. He should put her down just like the others and move on to the next targets.

But Fox couldn’t.

He could only drink too much and smoke too much and drive around too much and make too many notes on his clipboard.

Gluttony
, Fox the Senior would’ve called it, using that tone of voice that indicated Fox was a piece of shit that had gummed into the treads of his shoe.

Fox hoped it was gluttony, because the alternatives would’ve pissed off Senior even more. Greed. Sloth. Wrath. Envy. Pride. Lust.

Lust
.

Fuck yes, he lusted for Kate Murphy. Every man who laid eyes on her did. One more reason she didn’t belong on the city’s payroll. On the streets. In the grocery store. Anywhere an unsuspecting man of good character might see her.

Unfortunately, being lusted after was not a redeeming quality. If anything, it made Kate even more irredeemable. How could Fox in good conscience leave her out in the world where she could do more harm? Just entertaining the thought showed an unprecedented lack of discipline.

And like that, there was Fox’s father back in his head again.

Senior was the kind of man who valued discipline. Or at least he claimed to. Every lesson he gave Fox had something to do with self-control, doing the right thing. He never talked about how hard it was to stop somebody else from doing the wrong thing.

Lesson one: Do as I say, not as I do.

Senior was a Navy man. Four years was all he lasted. He had gone to college. Another four years down the drain. He had gotten married and fathered a son and lucked into a job at the factory, which took him into what was left of his miserable life.

Senior insisted that he had done everything that a man was supposed to do. Was it his fault that wasn’t good enough anymore? There was nothing wrong with Senior. Hell no. It was the system. It was the machines. It was the pushy broads. It was the uppity blacks. It was the lying Jews. It was the greasy Italians. It was the world turning upside down so that nobody really knew their place anymore.

The factory job was beneath Senior. He made that clear to Fox. He made it clear to Fox’s mother when she was beneath him, too. He was a better man than this. All of this. The walls were thin. Fox heard them at night: the way Senior took out his disappointment. The way his mother begged for mercy.

Fox begged for mercy, too.

Not for himself. For his mother. For Senior, too, because why was it that all the lessons Senior was trying to teach Fox disappeared the minute the bedroom door was closed?

Lesson two: Never hit a girl.

Fox was twelve years old, just a kid, the first time he realized what was really going on in the next room. He felt powerless. He tightened his fists. He tensed his muscles. He thought about jumping out of bed and saving his mother. Like Superman. Like Spider-Man. Like any man worth his salt.

Lesson three: It’s a man’s job to protect the weaker sex.

That same year, the old man took him to see a dentist. Too much money, but the teeth were literally rotting in Fox’s head. The office building was the tallest Fox had ever seen. Six stories of concrete and glass. Floor-to-ceiling windows that sparkled against the sun like diamonds.

Fox had never been in an elevator before. He stood at the back of the car with Senior. A woman got on. She was made up to be pretty, not pretty in a natural way. Her perfume smelled like too much candy. She was wearing a furry white coat. Fox remembered the way his nose tickled from just thinking about how soft the coat might be, because you would want to put your face in something like that—the coat, not the woman. Okay, maybe the woman, but Fox was at the age when those kinds of thoughts made him nervous.

The bell dinged. The elevator doors opened. Fox started to leave, but Senior grabbed him by the collar. Fox croaked like a frog. Senior smiled at the lady in the white coat. Fox was of the opinion that there was more to the smile. Not flirting, because his father didn’t punch above his weight, but a sort of “Please excuse my son’s ignorance,” because Fox still had a lot to learn.

Lesson four: Ladies always go first.

Fox was recording everything on his clipboard by then. Not Lessons, but Facts. The date and time to begin with. Then the number of blows at night. The number of apologies during the day. The way his mother struggled to muffle her screams. The way his father pushed her to let them out. The way Fox used to press his face to her stomach when she hugged him, and he’d smell washing detergent on her dress and sometimes onions if she was in the middle of making dinner.

Fox took another sip from the bottle. The familiar anger scratched at his chest, begging to be let out.

His mother had died exactly one month before his thirteenth birthday.

There were times before she died when she was happy. Fox didn’t have actual pictures of these moments, but his memories were photographic. His eyelids were like a slide carousel. He could blink and see images of her doing the things that brought her pleasure. Baking cookies. Letting Fox lick the batter off the spoon when she made a cake. Ironing Senior’s shirts.

She had actually smiled when she ironed Senior’s clothes.

And she had stood up to him. Fox didn’t know where she’d found the strength. Like every bully, Senior only had to be backed down once. He raised his hand to correct her, and she gave him this wilting look that sent his hand back down to his side. His bullying days were over. Yet again, the world had turned upside down. Fox’s mother forgot her place. Or maybe she remembered it. Maybe for her, the world was finally right side up again. Life had dragged her back by the collar the same way Senior had grabbed Fox in that elevator.

Please excuse my wife’s ignorance. She’s still learning
.

Why was Fox thinking about this now? Why was he sitting in his car drinking and thinking about the way his mother had finally found her ability to fight back?

Because of Kate Murphy.

Kate was the answer to a lot of his questions lately. He was watching her too much. Thinking too much. Letting his mind consider the options too much.

Like his mother, Kate was a fighter. She had knocked Jimmy Lawson to the ground right in the middle of the goddamn projects. Fox had laughed when it happened. He had known from the beginning that Kate was different.

He hadn’t expected to like it.

9

Maggie drove past Mellow Mushroom pizza on Spring Street. Her stomach grumbled, but she saw the cops eating inside and decided to go somewhere else. She could always skip lunch and grab a coffee from one of the diners. Or she could keep taking mindless calls for the rest of the day while the boys ran up and down the city bashing in heads.

The radio had been buzzing all morning with hot tips that turned out to be nothing. Even the black officers were in on it, urgently sending units across town only to find out the guy who was going to talk wasn’t talking anymore or was lying about what he’d said in the first place.

This latter situation didn’t cause the problems you’d think. One of the things that had disheartened Maggie the most about being a police officer was the constant lies that people told; not the bad guys, but the regular citizens who were supposed to be helpful. They gave false names, false jobs. They lied about where they worked, what car they drove, where they lived. That they did all of this for absolutely no reason was as
maddening as it was alarming. These were the same eyewitnesses who put men in jail every day.

Eyewitnesses like Jimmy.

The report Terry had read during roll call this morning was a load of bull. Maggie had nearly bitten off her tongue trying to keep quiet. Fifteen feet away? As in, Officer Jimmy Lawson was standing ten, fifteen feet away when Officer Don Wesley was shot in the head?

Maggie had seen the dried blood on her brother. The only way Jimmy could’ve been sprayed like that standing ten or fifteen feet away was if Don had been shot with a bazooka. Jimmy was either lying to save face or lying for the sake of lying. And he was going to get away with it because no one on the force—especially Terry—wanted to hear that their darling golden boy had screwed up.

Golden Boy.

The sports reporters had called Jimmy Lawson Atlanta’s Golden Boy. He was still in junior high then, but Friday night football games were the most important entertainment in town. At the beginning of the season, there was always a pullout section in
The Atlanta Journal
that highlighted all the up-and-coming players around the state. Jimmy’s picture had been on the front page. Maggie still had the article somewhere. Probably in the scrapbook she’d kept on him since his first game.

Maggie heard the sharp blast of a siren. She waved, recognizing Rick Anderson and Jake Coffee as they passed her on the opposite side of the street. She’d seen them twice today, which wasn’t unusual, as their beats overlapped. What made their presence noteworthy was that none of the guys were sticking to their beats today. They were barely sticking to their zones.

Contrary to Cal Vick’s warning about cowboys, they’d all declared open season on the population. Maggie had stopped counting the radio requests for paddy wagons when the number reached ten. There probably wasn’t a black man in Atlanta who wouldn’t be fingerprinted by the end of the day. The mayor would be wise to stay in his office.

“Hello,” Maggie mumbled to herself. She tapped the brakes, slowing the car.

There was a suspicious-looking man walking down the street. Young, white, clean-cut. None of the things that belonged in this neighborhood.

He was wearing a long coat that was meant for a taller man. The hem hit just above his brown loafers, showing spindly ankles with no socks. His hands were tucked deep into the pockets. His shoulders were stooped. Maggie couldn’t pinpoint it, but there was something about the way he was walking that didn’t sit right. She slowed the car to a crawl, trailing behind him like she could sneak up on the guy in a twenty-five-hundred-pound police car.

The man didn’t turn around. He didn’t run. He didn’t pick up his pace. His hands stayed fisted in his coat pockets, but that could be because of the wind. Or because he had something in one of his hands. A gun? Not this kid. Maybe a bag of weed or an eight ball.

Maggie whooped the siren. He didn’t jump, which irritated her because it meant that he knew she was there, and if he knew she was there, he should’ve turned around.

And he sure as hell should not have kept walking.

She punched the gas and pulled a few yards ahead of him. By the time Maggie got out of the car, the guy already had an annoyed look on his face, like he had every reason to be in the street wearing a raincoat he’d probably stolen off a homeless man.

Maggie blocked his path. Up close, she changed her estimation. Not so clean-cut. Not so innocuous. She snapped open her holster. She rested her hand on her revolver. “Did you see me behind you? Did you hear the siren?

“I assumed you were—”

“Shut up and listen to me.” That got his attention. His jaw tightened. He gave her a hostile look. Maggie said, “Very slowly, I want you to use only the tips of your fingers to pull your pockets inside out.”

He moved quickly. She pulled her revolver, cocked the hammer.

He gave her a weak smile. “Really, Officer, this is a misunderstanding.”

Just the sound of his voice sent up all kinds of flags. He might have
been unshaven, but his accent shouted rich white Yankee. “Yeah. You misunderstand who’s in charge here. Pockets. Slowly.”

He used the tips of his fingers to pull out the pockets. A used Kleenex fell to the ground. A penny. Loose tobacco. His hands were empty. He was probably a little younger than Maggie. His hair was trimmed well above the collar, sideburns short. The peach fuzz on his chin made his round face look younger.

She asked, “You got any ID on you?”

He shook his head. His eyes looked down, but there was nothing meek about him.

“What’s your name?”

“Harry Angstrom.”

“You think I’ve never read John Updike?” He started to respond, but she stopped him before he could lie again. “Let’s call you London Fog, all right?”

He glanced up, then quickly looked down again. She thought that he was looking at his feet. He was actually looking at her gun.