the old cop had protested. Every week Frank had come in, asking for a change in assignment, and every week Jeffrey had told him to get used to it. Part of the rea-son the city had brought in Jeffrey, an outsider, was to drag the force out of the Stone Age. Jeffrey had handpicked Lena Adams from the police academy and groomed her from day one to be the first female detective on the squad.
Jeffrey did not know what to do with her now. He had put Lena with Brad Stephens on a temporary basis until her hands healed, hoping the downtime would help her ease back into her job. Just last month she had gotten a clearance from her doctor to return to active duty, but Lena had yet to ask for her old assignment back. For Frank's part, he could not even look her in the eye when she said hello to him. Jeffrey had heard Frank say a million times that women did not belong on the force, and Frank seemed to take Lena 's attack as confirmation of this.
Logically, Jeffrey did not agree with Frank's assessment. Women cops were good for the force. Ideally, the makeup of the force should reflect that of the community. Lena had brought a thoughtfulness to the job. She was better with certain types of perpetrators and knew how to handle female victims of crime, something that had been missing in the senior squad prior to her promotion. What's more, having a female detective had encouraged other women to join the ranks. There were fifteen women on patrol now. When Ben Walker had left the force, the only women in its employ had been secretaries. Despite all of this progress, when Jeffrey thought about what Lena had gone through, what had been done to her, he wanted to lock her up in her house and stand outside with a shotgun in case anyone ever tried to hurt her again.
Frank interrupted his thoughts, asking, 'There gonna be some kind of internal investigation on this thing?' He paused, picking at the corner of the case file. 'The Weaver shooting, I mean.'
Jeffrey nodded, sitting back in his chair. 'I talked to the mayor this morning. I want you to take Brad and Lena 's statements. Buddy Conford's the city attorney on this one.'
'He's a public defender,' Frank pointed out.
'Yeah, well, not on this one,' Jeffrey told him. 'There's some concern about the girl's mother. The city has an insurance policy for this kind of thing. Maybe they'll settle it out of court. I dunno.' Jeffrey shrugged. 'She was threatening someone with a gun and all. It's just kind of tricky, you know?'
'Yeah,' Frank answered. 'I know.' He waited a few beats, then asked, 'You okay with this, Chief?'
Jeffrey felt some of his resolve falter. The sinking, lost feeling he had experienced last night with Sara came back, and he felt a heaviness in his chest. He had never shot anyone, let alone killed a little girl. His mind kept playing back the scene with Jenny, picking apart the clock, trying to find the place where his negotiations had gone sour. There had to be something else he could have said or done that would have made her put down that gun. There had to be an alternative.
'Chief?' Frank said. 'For what it's worth, Brad and Lena will back you a hundred percent. You know that, right?'
'Yeah,' Jeffrey answered, not taking comfort in Frank's words because he knew that Brad and Lena would back him even if they did not think what Jeffrey had done was right. There were gray areas in law enforcement, but when it came down to the wire, cops always backed cops. Brad would do this because at some level he worshipped Jeffrey. Lena would do it because she felt she owed Jeffrey something for letting her back on the job.
For Jeffrey, this was hardly a consolation.
Both men were silent. Jeffrey turned his head, looking at the shelves lining the far wall of his office. Shooting trophies were there, awarded for his marksmanship. An old football from when he played for Auburn was on the bottom shelf. Pictures of guys he had worked with on the job in Grant as well as back in Birmingham were alongside a couple of snapshots of Sara he had taken on their honeymoon. He had put these up recently, when they started dating again. Now, he wasn't so sure about wanting the pictures in his office, let alone wanting Sara in his life. Jeffrey still could not get over how distant she had been last night, tensing up when he touched her, telling him what to do. Like he didn't know how to do what he was doing. Like he hadn't done it hundreds of times before with other women who were a hell of a lot more receptive than Sara had been.
Frank turned around in his chair when the half-doors separating the squad room from the reception area clapped open. Sara walked through, her briefcase in one hand. She was dressed in a light blue dress that looked like a long T-shirt. Jeffrey could see she had decided to go with tennis shoes without socks to complete the ensemble. She probably hadn't even shaved her legs.
Both men watched as Sara made her way to the office. Her hair was a mess and Jeffrey wondered if she had even bothered to comb it. Sara had never been the kind of woman who was interested in high fashion and she seldom wore makeup. Sometimes this was sexy, sometimes it made her look sloppy, like she was more interested in being a doctor than being a woman. As she got closer to them, he could see that her glasses were crooked on her face. For some reason, this irritated him more than anything else.
Frank stood when she entered the room, so Jeffrey followed suit.
'Hi,' she said, smiling nervously. Jeffrey was glad she was uncomfortable.
'Hey there,' Frank said, buttoning his jacket.
Sara smiled at Frank, then said, 'I've called Nick Shelton,' referring to Grant County 's Georgia Bureau of Investigations field agent. 'I asked him to track any cases involving this kind of mutilation. He said he'd have something Wednesday at the latest.'
When Jeffrey did not address this, Frank supplied, 'Good thinking.'
'And,' Sara continued, 'I called around to the hospitals. Nobody came in last night seeking postlabor treatment. I left the number here at the station in case they get someone in.'
Frank pulled at the collar of his shirt. 'So, you think there's any way the girl could have done this to herself? This circumcision thing?'
'God, no.' Sara seemed to bristle at this. 'And, it's not circumcision,' she told him. 'This is tantamount to castration. Her clitoris and labia minora were completely scraped away, then what was left was sewn together with thread.'
'Oh,' Frank said, obviously uncomfortable with this information.
Sara pursed her lips. 'It's the same as cutting off a man's penis.'
Frank looked uncomfortably from Jeffrey to Sara, then back again.
'Anyway.' Sara gestured to her briefcase. 'I'm ready to start the briefing.'
'That's been postponed,' Jeffrey said, hearing the hard tone to his voice but unable to do anything about it. When he had called to ask Sara to come in early, he had not mentioned why. He told her, 'Dottie Weaver will be here in about fifteen minutes. I want to get her out of here as soon as I can.'
'Oh,' she said, surprised. 'Okay. I guess I can do some paperwork at the clinic. You think a couple of hours will do it?'
He shook his head no. 'I want you to sit in on the interview.'
Sara gave him a careful look. 'I'm not a cop.'
' Lena is,' he told her. 'She'll be leading the interview. I want you there because she knows you.'
She tucked her hand into her hip. ' Lena or Dottie?'
Frank cleared his throat. 'I got some calls to make,' he said, giving Sara a polite nod before leaving the room.
After he was gone, Sara turned to Jeffrey, giving him a questioning look.
He asked, 'Is that a nightgown?'
'What?'
'What you're wearing,' he said, indicating her dress. 'It looks like a
