building in her stomach. 'Was that your connection?'
He whispered something, blood spraying in a fine mist on the filthy linoleum.
'Who?' she screamed, leaning over his curled body, wanting to hear his words, to get the dealer's name. She would track him down, take him into the woods, and put a bullet in his skull. 'Who was that man?'
'He was…' Hank wheezed.
'Give me his name,' Lena ordered, kneeling beside him, her fists clenched so tight that her fingernails were cutting into her palms. 'Tell me who he is, you stupid fucker.'
His head turned up, and she saw him struggling to focus. When his eyelids began to flutter closed, she grabbed his greasy yellow hair in her fist, yanked his head up so he had no choice but to look at her.
'Who is he?' she repeated.
'The man…'
'Who?' Lena said. 'Who is he?'
'He's the one,' Hank mumbled, his eyes closing as if the effort of keeping them open was just too much. Still, he finished, 'He killed your mother.'
MONDAY EVENING
THREE
From the moment James Oglethorpe first set foot in Georgia, men had been trying to chop up the state into their own perfect little pieces. The first attempt came in 1741, when the Trustees decided to split the land into two colonies: Savannah and Frederica. When Georgia became a royal colony and adopted the Church of England as their official religion, the territory was sectioned into eight parishes. After the Revolutionary War, Creek and Cherokee land in the south was taken for white expansion, then later more Cherokee land was claimed in the north.
By the mid-1800s, no Indian territory remained, so the good ol' boys decided to start subdividing existing counties. Once 1877 rolled around, there were 137 counties in Georgia – so many little pockets of political power that the state constitution was amended to stop the overdevelopment, then amended again in 1945 to close loopholes that had allowed the creation of 16 counties in between. The final number allowed was 159, each with its own representative in the state assembly, its own county seat, its own tax base, schools, judges, political systems, and its own locally elected sheriff.
Jeffrey did not know much about Elawah County, other than that its founders had obviously borrowed the name from the Indians they had kicked out for the land. Night had come by the time he and Sara reached the town limits, and from what they could see, the place was not much to write home about. Lena was hardly the type to sit down and chat about her childhood, and Jeffrey understood why as he drove through Reece, Elawah's county seat. Even the dark of night could not obscure the town's depressing bleakness.
Jeffrey had studied American history at Auburn University, but you wouldn't find it written in any textbook that there were some places in the south that still had not recovered from Reconstruction. Running water, indoor plumbing, basic necessities that other Americans took for granted, were considered luxuries to people living on the wrong side of Reece's tracks. Jeffrey's hometown of Sylacauga, Alabama, had been poor, but not this kind of poor. Reece was the sort of festering wound that was only exposed when some kind of natural disaster yanked off the scab.
'Up here on the left,' Sara said, reading the directions Jeffrey had gotten from the sheriff.
Jeffrey took the turn, glancing at Sara as a streetlight illuminated the car's interior. She had changed into jeans and a sweater, but her face was still drawn. He wasn't sure if this was because of the malpractice deposition or because of the situation with Lena. He had been surprised when Sara had volunteered to come. She was certainly no fan of Lena 's. While the two women had managed to keep their exchanges civil over the years, some of the worst arguments Jeffrey and Sara had had in recent memory were over the young detective – Lena's stubbornness, her quick temper, what Sara saw as the other woman's casual disregard for her own safety and Jeffrey saw as the makings of a damn good cop.
Part of Sara's bad opinion was Jeffrey's fault. At home, he only talked about Lena in the context of her screwups. He'd never had a conversation with Sara about the things Lena did well: the way she could work an interrogation or the fact that sometimes she actually learned from her mistakes. Having made colossal mistakes of his own early on in the job, Jeffrey was more forgiving. Truthfully, Lena reminded him a lot of himself when he was her age. Maybe Sara felt the same way; she wasn't exactly a big fan of the Jeffrey Tolliver she'd known ten years ago.
If Jeffrey had to guess, he'd say that Sara's offer to tag along came because she hadn't wanted to be by herself. Or maybe she'd just wanted to get the hell out of town. Jeffrey wasn't too pleased with how the citizens of Grant County were treating his wife right now, either. For the last two months, he'd been keeping a running list in his head of people who would never have a speeding ticket fixed for them again.
'Up here,' she said, pointing to a side street that looked like a dead end.
'You sure?'
Sara scanned the directions again. 'It says take a right at the barbecue joint.'
He slowed the car as he blindly reached overhead, looking for a way to turn on the interior lights.
'Here,' she said, pressing a button near the rearview mirror. Sara's BMW was like butter on the road, but all the bells and whistles made Jeffrey's head hurt.
He took the directions from her, holding them up to the light.
She said, 'It's not like I can't read your handwriting. You have the penmanship of a first grade teacher.'
He pointed to the satellite navigation screen on the dash, which had read, 'No data available for this position' for the last half hour. 'How much extra did you pay for this thing?'
'What does that have to do with your handwriting?'
He didn't answer as he looked at his notes. He'd clearly written 'right at barbecue joint.'
Jeffrey handed the sheet of paper back to Sara and took the right. He drove slowly, the car's tires dipping into one pothole after another. He was about to turn around when Sara spotted a familiar blue road sign with an H on it. Farther up ahead, they could see the bright lights of a parking lot, and beyond this, what could only be the hospital.
' Fifth Avenue,' Sara read off the street sign. She didn't say anything more as he pulled into the parking lot.
The Elawah County Medical Center was across from a Dunkin' Donuts and a Kentucky Fried Chicken, both closed this time of night. The hospital building was an architect's nightmare. Part poured concrete, part cinder block, and yet another part brick, the two-story structure looked like a mangy dog that had been kicked to the curb. The few vehicles scattered around the parking lot were mostly trucks, mud caked around their wheel wells from a recent rain. NASCAR stickers and Jesus fish dotted the chrome bumpers.
