didn't think her paranoia an unhealthy emotion.
She had tried to cover the hole she'd kicked in the wall of Hank's office with a couple of trashcans from the bar. Unless you knew what you were looking for, the damage wasn't as obvious as she'd thought. She glanced over her shoulder, shined her light toward the woods, before pushing aside the trashcans and going into the office.
Inside, the shack looked exactly as she'd left it. She couldn't decide if it was a good thing or a bad thing that Hank hadn't been back. Deacon Simms was dead. Other than Charlotte Warren, Hank didn't have any friends he could turn to. There was no couch he could crash on, no spare room he could hole up in.
The checkbook was still open on his desk. She sat down in the chair and went back through the register. As far as she could remember, everything was the same as when she'd found Charlotte 's letters. Still, Lena flipped through the checks, making sure none were missing. Next, she went through the desk again, this time looking for anything that might connect to Deacon Simms. All she found was Hank's spare set of keys under a beat-up old copy of
Lena pocketed the keys and flipped through the book, which bore the stamp of the Elawah County Library on the spine. Glued on the back of the cover was a paper pocket with a checkout slip tucked inside. 'Lena Adams' was scribbled on the strip where she'd signed out the book a billion years ago. She'd needed it for an English paper. Lena had loved the book but blown off the assignment. When the teacher had called Hank to let him know, Lena had lied, told him she'd lost the book. In addition to tanning her hide, Hank had made her pay for the book out of her allowance.
And the asshole had kept it this entire time.
Lena tossed the book onto the desk, accidentally knocking over a stack of receipts. She was scooping them up, trying to put them back in a pile, when she saw the telephone underneath. The phone was old, the kind they started making shortly after getting rid of the rotary dial. Lena reached behind it and followed the cord under the desk, looking for the answering machine. She guessed that as with the electric supply, Hank hadn't bothered to pay the phone company to get service all the way out to the shack. The galvanized pipe with the extension cord that led back to the bar was about two inches round – there was plenty of space for a long telephone extension cord.
She tucked the checkbook under her arm and knelt down to leave the shack through the hole.
There wasn't anything worth stealing in the office, but she moved the trashcans back in front of the hole.
The back door of the bar was padlocked, but that had been Hank's doing, not the drug agents. As with the front door, ATF had stuck their usual tape across the jamb but she easily cut the seal with one of the keys. Lena matched the Kryptonite key to the padlock, then a smaller Yale key to the deadbolt. The metal door groaned as it opened, the pungent odor of stale smoke and beer spilling into the night air.
The soles of her shoes snicked across the rubber fatigue mats as she walked through the kitchen. Something ran over her foot and she stood stock still, hoping that it was just a rat then hoping that it was alone. She used her flashlight to find the light switch, her mind conjuring a host of rabid rodents eager to attack. There was a noise in the corner that she chose to ignore as she walked to the front of the bar.
Lena coughed, her lungs not quite used to the stale smoke and lack of oxygen. She turned on the light switches as she walked through, one of them triggering the jukebox into starting up in the middle of a song. Trash was scattered everywhere and she saw the sheen of spilled drinks that had left sticky spots on the linoleum. It didn't take a detective to read this scene. The cops had come in, cleared everybody out, made their arrests, and turned off the lights on their way out.
Suddenly, Lena remembered something. She knelt down behind the bar and rapped the floor with the back of her knuckles, straining to hear over the jukebox. She finally found what she was looking for and took out her knife to pry up a tile. Underneath, she saw a cigar box cradled between the joists. Hank's hidden stash. Lena opened the box; there was about two thousand dollars in it. She hesitated, feeling suddenly like a thief. This was Hank's money. Was it stealing from him if she took it so he couldn't buy dope?
She stood on the top of the bar and tucked the money behind a bottle of scotch that was so cheap the coloring had turned to sediment in the bottom. She jumped down and returned the empty cigar box to its hiding place. Some country crooner Lena didn't recognize was just dipping into a ballad as she pressed her heel into the tile, snapping it back in place. She felt better now, like she had done something to help Hank instead of contributing to his demise.
The telephone was behind the bar under the cash register, just where it always was. The answering machine beside it read twelve calls. Lena pressed play, and figured that the most recent calls came first when her own voice said, 'Hank, it's Lee. Where are you?' She was shocked at her tone as it echoed in the bar, the anger that radiated from every word. Did she always sound this hateful when she called him? Lena shook her head; another thing she couldn't think about right now.
The next call was from Nan, Sibyl's lover. Her words were kinder but her message was clear, 'I haven't heard from you in a few days and I was getting worried. Please let me know if you're doing all right.'
Message ten came on, a staticky silence Lena was about to fast- forward through when she heard the beginning of an automated message that made her stomach knot.
Georgia, like just about every state in the union, used an electronic system to handle calls from prison inmates. A computerized voice announced the prison from which the call originated and advised the listener to be sure they understood the charges before they pressed a button to okay the call. Then, every two minutes, the same automated voice came on the line to remind the recipient that he or she was talking to an inmate in a state prison. The exorbitant charges helped pay for listening software to monitor inmate calls as well as protect unsuspecting strangers from getting a twenty-dollar bill for a two-minute call.
The recording was pretty standard, first announcing the origin of the call, then allowing a three-second spot for the inmate to say his name. Over the years, for various cases, Lena had listened to some of the inmate calls coming out of the Grant County jail. It was amazing what the perps could fit into the short bursts the three seconds allowed. They seldom said their names – it was more like the world's fastest opportunity to beg somebody to talk to you. They ranged from, 'Mama, I love you, please talk to me,' to her personal favorite, 'I'm gonna kill you, bitch,' from a man who kept insisting to the judge that he posed no threat to his wife.
Hank's machine played the fifth message, a duplicate to the four that preceded it. 'This is a collect call from an inmate in Coastal State Prison. Press one if you wish to talk to inmate-'
Lena put her hand on the bar to hold herself up. She let the machine play, her throat feeling as if she had swallowed glass.
Five times the same message played, five times she heard his voice. She could not stop herself. She listened to the next one, then the next. All of them were the same. All played that hard, emotionless voice that seemed to echo the computer's own.
The number one flashed on the machine as the final message played.
'This is a collect phone call from an inmate at Coastal State Prison. Press one if you wish to talk to inmate-' Lena held her breath, hoping it would be different this time, that this was all some kind of sick joke.
It was not.
The speaker captured his voice perfectly, playing his slow, sure cadence as he enunciated each word.
'Ethan Green.'
Lena ripped out the machine and threw it against the wall.
