Cop Town (31 page)

Lee opened the door. His eyes went wide. He’d noticed the blood on her uniform.

“Don’t worry,” she told him, feeling self-conscious because she’d forgotten how he looked at people’s mouths when they talked. “It’s not mine.”

“Are you all right?” His
r
’s were soft.
Ah you ah-wight?

Maggie checked her house to make sure no one was outside. “Is there a central place at the phone company that has numbers and addresses for businesses?”

To his credit, Lee didn’t ask her if she had checked the Yellow Pages. “The billing department.”

“I need the address for a bar called Dabbler’s.” She spelled out the name for him, carefully enunciating each letter. “Can you get it for me?”

“Yes.”

Maggie let herself breathe for the first time in days.

He asked again, “Are you all right?”

Maggie could remember Lee asking her the same question eight years ago. She was lying on the couch in his mother’s kitchen. The air was hot and sticky. His mother wasn’t much of a cook. She was a nurse who worked nights. All of their meals were frozen dinners and fast food, which was a luxury nobody else on the street could afford.

Maggie asked, “Can you put the address in my mailbox? I’m the only one who checks it.”

“I know.” Lee seemed to realize what he’d revealed. He looked out at the street.

Maggie saw the hearing aid tucked above his ear. He wore his old one when he jogged, probably because the new kind was more expensive. She guessed it was fifteen years ago that Jimmy and Lee had gotten into their last fistfight. Jimmy had broken Lee’s hearing aid. Lee’s father had come to the house and showed it to Delia. He worked for the phone company, too. He was still wearing his lineman’s belt. His eyes were bloodshot, which was odd because he wasn’t a drinker. Delia had to work extra shifts for three months to pay for a new hearing aid. She’d grounded Jimmy, but Terry had still taken him out on weekends.

“I’m sorry,” Maggie said, but Lee wasn’t looking at her and she wasn’t sure he had heard.

“Maggie!” Terry yelled.

She jumped at the sound of his voice. Lee heard it, too. He was already shutting the door. Maggie ran down the stairs. She crossed the yard.

“Maggie!”

“What, Terry? What do you want?”

Terry stood in the doorway. Anger burned in his eyes. He was huffing like a bull. Nostrils flared. Mouth open.

Maggie stopped. She had learned the hard way that as bad as Terry could be when he was screaming, it was far, far worse when he was quiet.

He spoke through gritted teeth. “Get in the house. Now.”

Maggie walked up the stairs. She clutched the wobbly railing. Her legs could barely hold her. The last time Terry got this way, he had beaten her into the ground.

The kitchen had taken on a darkness that wasn’t there before. Delia stood in the middle of the room. She held a sheet of notebook paper between her shaking hands. She was swaying. Maggie thought about the knife in Gail’s eye, the way the handle had moved back and forth as Gail tried not to blink.

Delia stared at the words on the notebook paper. Everything about her trembled. “It’s not true. Tell me it’s not true.”

Maggie could see the blue ink through the white paper. The handwriting was Jimmy’s. She took the note from her mother. The first line was so incomprehensible that it might as well have been written in another language.

I am the Atlanta Shooter
.

Maggie felt a cold sensation envelop her body.

I killed those guys because I was a dirty fag with them and I didn’t want anybody to find out
.

Maggie braced her hand on the counter so that she would not sink to the floor.

Don’t try to find me or I will kill more people. Maggie—

Maggie read her name twice. She couldn’t recall ever seeing her name written in her brother’s hand.

Maggie, I’m sorry that I never apologized to you. I should’ve told you that what happened wasn’t your fault
.

She studied the signature. He’d written his full name at the bottom—James Lawson. The only letters she could make out were the
J
and the
L
.
Maggie knew the mark was made by her brother’s hand. She typed all his reports. Every morning before roll call, she watched Jimmy scribble his signature on the dotted line.

Terry said, “This doesn’t leave this room.”

His words hung somewhere over her head. Maggie felt like she could reach up and touch them.

Delia said, “But the guys. They can—”

“I mean it,” Terry interrupted. “Nobody hears about this.”

Maggie started shaking her head. “It’s a confession. We have to—”

Terry’s hand clamped around her neck. Maggie’s feet lifted from the floor. She clawed at his fingers.

“I said no one hears about this.”

Maggie kicked her feet against the wall. Her lungs screamed in her chest.

“This gets out—” He tightened his grip around her throat. “Them guys find out they been riding with a faggot—”

“Terry,” Delia begged. “Terry, she’s turning blue. Let her go. Please. Please.”

Terry released his grip.

Maggie fell to the floor. She gulped for air. Her throat felt raw.

Delia said, “It’s not true. My boy’s not a queer. Somebody musta made him write that.”

“Bullshit,” Terry countered. “I don’t care if you hold a gun to my head, ain’t no way I’d say I was a faggot. You’d have to kill me first.”

Delia couldn’t let it go. “Jimmy’s out with a new girl every weekend. He’s always fighting them off with a stick.”

Maggie rasped the glass out of her throat. She picked up the letter from the floor. “Where did you find this?” She looked at Delia, then Terry. “Where?”

Delia answered, “Terry found it on his bed.”

Maggie was halfway up the stairs before she realized she was moving. She pushed herself to keep going into the hall. She passed Delia’s room, Lilly’s with her always-closed door, her own room, and then she stood outside Jimmy’s doorway.

Terry must have kicked in the door. The jamb was splintered. Wood stuck out like daggers. Maggie ran her fingertips along the sharp ends. They dragged a white line across her skin.

Jimmy’s room was painted the same dark gray as the rest of the house. The hundred-watt bulb in the ceiling fixture gave the space the appearance of a crime scene. He had a full-sized bed that Delia had bought for him when he turned sixteen. There was a dresser they had taken off the sidewalk when the family down the street got evicted. His Dopp kit was open on the top. She saw his razor, his comb, and brush. His aftershaves were lined up in a neat row. This was the only area in which Jimmy liked variety. Pierre Cardin. English Leather. Brut. Prince Matchabelli. Maggie gave him a new kind every year at Christmas.

She went to Jimmy’s closet. There was no door, just a curtain that he pulled back. His uniforms were on the left, where she always hung them. His pants were in the middle, then shirts, then jackets on the far right. Jimmy was particular about his closet. He kept the colors grouped together. Navy. Black. Gray. White.

Maggie looked down at the letter in her hand.

I am the Atlanta Shooter
.

She heard Terry behind her. He was still breathing hard, probably from coming up the stairs. She asked, “Where was Jimmy this afternoon? After we left?”

Terry didn’t answer.

Maggie started checking the pockets in Jimmy’s clothes.

I killed those guys because I was a dirty fag with them
.…

Delia asked, “What are you looking for?”

Maggie kept searching the pockets. Nothing. No matchbooks. No more confessions. She did all of Jimmy’s laundry. She was constantly finding phone numbers scribbled onto napkins and torn pieces of paper.

Had all those numbers belonged to men?

Delia said, “Maggie, stop. You know Jimmy doesn’t like you going through his stuff.”

Maggie couldn’t stop. What was she expected to believe? That her brother followed her to the Portuguese house today? That he had almost
killed Kate? That he had shot the pimp? And what about the other men—Keen and Porter, Ballard and Johnson? Was she supposed to accept that her brother had murdered all of those men, then come to the breakfast table the next morning and filled up on coffee and bacon and eggs with his family?

And Don Wesley—Don was Jimmy’s friend. They were partners.

Maggie turned around. Terry and Delia were standing behind her. She had to talk out the words before they exploded in her head. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would he do it?”

“Because he’s a faggot,” Terry answered. “Can’t you fucking read? You’re the college girl. It was right in front of your face the whole time, but you had your head too far up your ass to see it.”

“You didn’t see it, either.”

Terry backhanded her so hard that Maggie fell against the wall. She put her hand to her cheek. The skin had broken open.

“Fucking mess,” Terry mumbled as he paced the room. The space was small. He could only go three steps before he had to turn back around. “What the fuck was he thinking?”

No one answered, because there wasn’t an answer that made sense. The only sound that broke the silence was the familiar scratch of a needle on a record.
Tapestry
. Lilly had the volume up. She didn’t want to hear what was going on.

Terry said, “This can’t get out. Do you hear me? None of this can get out.”

Maggie watched him go from one side of the room to the other. He was more enraged about Jimmy being gay than he was about Jimmy being a murderer.

Delia tried again. “Maybe Bud and Cal can—”

“No,” Terry stopped her. “Nobody finds out, Dee. That’s it. We handle this on our own.”

“What are you going to do?” Delia sounded terrified. “Terry, please. Tell me what you’re going to do.”

He kept pacing. He was thinking it through, trying to see a way out.
Finally, he decided, “I’m gonna track him down and kill him myself, is what I’m going to do.”

“Terry!” Delia screamed. “For the love of—”

“Goddamn it!” Terry punched the wall so hard that the plaster bowed.

No one spoke for another moment.
Tapestry
played on. “So Far Away.”

Terry stared at his hand. The knuckles were already black and blue from work. Fresh cuts had rent open the skin. He flexed his fingers into and out of a fist.

He said, “I gotta put him down, Dee. He’s a Lawson. It’s my responsibility.”

“Terry.” Delia was turning his name into a mantra. “Terry, no. You can’t.”

“You wanna trial? Is that what you want?” He looked disgusted by the idea. “Your cocksucking son pouring out his heart on the stand? Talkin’ about how he went queer on all them cops he murdered?”

The color drained from Delia’s face.

“You tell Cal Vick this, he’ll shoot him himself. Same with Jett, Mack, Red—all of ’em. They’ll put him down and nobody’ll blame ’em.”

“It won’t be like that,” Delia insisted. “Something’s wrong. He wasn’t right in the head when he wrote this.”

“You think a jury will buy some kind of temporary insanity?” Terry flexed his hands again. “You wanna roll that dice, take a chance they won’t send him straight to Old Sparky?”

Delia clutched the doorknob to keep herself from falling.

“You wanna go to the state pen and watch ’em strap our boy into the electric chair?” Terry wiped his bloody hand on Jimmy’s sheets. “They put ’em in diapers because they shit themselves. They don’t like the guy, maybe they don’t wet the sponge enough, so when the switch is flipped, he catches on fire and burns alive.” Terry grabbed Delia’s arm. “Is that what you want for him, Dee? You wanna watch him burn?”

“Oh, God, Terry. Please don’t say these things. Please! I can’t hear them.”

“You need to hear them.” He looked at Maggie. “You need to hear ’em, too, tough gal. He may be a dirty queer, but he’s still your brother.”

Maggie didn’t know what to say. All of this was too much. Her throat was sore. Her head was pounding. This was insane. She couldn’t believe it—not any of it. Jimmy wasn’t gay, and he sure as hell wasn’t a murderer.

“Mom.” Maggie needed to make her see reason. She took Delia’s hand. “He didn’t do it. There’s no way—”

“No!” Delia pulled back like she’d been scalded. “Don’t you talk to me! Don’t you say anything else! You should’ve never taken that job! It was too much stress on Jimmy!”

The hate in her eyes pierced Maggie’s soul.

“This is all on you, Margaret.” Delia’s voice got stronger with every word. “If you’d gotten married, then Jimmy would’ve, too.” She seemed almost relieved. She told Terry, “That’s it. He couldn’t meet a girl and get married. He couldn’t abandon us, because no one else would take care of us.”

Terry said, “I take plenty damn good care of you.”

“I know you do.” Delia rested her hand on his chest. The panic was winding down now that she had figured out who was really to blame. “I know you do good by us. But Jimmy—he’s a young man. He’s under a lot of pressure. He just didn’t know what he was doing. I’m sure that’s it, Terry. I’m sure he can explain.”

Terry put his hand over Delia’s. He looked at her in a way that made Maggie’s stomach turn. “I’ll handle this, Dee.”

Maggie stared down at Jimmy’s note. His confession. His apology.

I’m sorry I never apologized to you
.

What did he mean? He’d apologized to Maggie at the hospital just yesterday. The moment was seared into her memory. Jimmy had never apologized to her for anything before. Was there something else he was sorry for? Was there some other thing he’d done that Maggie still hadn’t found out about?

Not murder. She could believe her big, strong brother was a homosexual before she could believe that he would kill five men in cold blood.

“You have to stop this,” Maggie told Terry. “Jimmy wrote this letter for a reason.”

“He wrote it because he wants us to stop him. You ever think of that?”

Maggie didn’t have a response. She hadn’t thought of that. She looked at the last two lines. The apology that ignored the apology from the day before.

Was it possible that she was wrong about her brother? Eight years was a long time. The Jimmy that Maggie knew was a grown man now. He went places she didn’t know about. He had friends she had never met. Sometimes, he stayed out all night and no one ever asked him questions about it in the morning.