“What about door number three?” Will asked.

“Wife beater.”

“I am not!” came a muffled shout from behind the door.

Knox silently nodded to Will. “Third time he’s been locked up for it. She won’t testify—”

“Goddamn right!” the man screamed.

“He’s covered in his own puke, so I’m gonna have to hose him down if you wanna talk to him.”

“I hate to ask …” Will shrugged. “It might help expedite this so we can all get back to our lives. My wife’s gonna kill me if I’m not home for the holiday.”

“Know whatcha mean.” Knox motioned Will to the next cell. The door was open. “This is it.”

Tommy Braham’s blood had been cleaned up, but the red stain on the concrete floor told the story. His feet would have been toward the door, head back. Maybe he was lying on his side, arm out in front of him. Will guessed from the circumference of the stain that Tommy had not just stopped at one wrist. He had cut open both to make sure the job was done right.

Will stepped into the cell, feeling a slight sense of claustrophobia. He took in the cinder-block-lined walls, the metal bed frame with its thin mattress. The toilet and sink were built as one stainless steel unit. The bowl looked clean, but the smell of sewage was pungent. Beside the sink was a toothbrush, a metal cup, and a small tube of toothpaste like the kind you’d get at a hotel. Will wasn’t superstitious, but he was keenly aware that Tommy Braham had, in his misery, taken his life here less than eight hours ago. The feel of his death still lingered.

“‘Not me,’” Knox said.

Will turned around, wondering what he meant.

Knox nodded toward the faded wall. “That’s what he wrote. ‘Not me.’” He took on a knowing tone. “If it wasn’t you, buddy, then why’d you kill yourself?”

Will had never found it useful to ask dead men to explain their motivations, so he threw the question back to Knox. “Why do you think he kept insisting he didn’t kill Allison Spooner?”

“Told you.” Knox touched the side of his head. “Not right up here.”

“Crazy?”

“Nah, just stupider than shit.”

“Too stupid to know how to kill somebody?”

“Hell, I wish there was such a thing. Wouldn’t have to keep such a close eye on the wife during that time of month.” He gave a loud laugh, and Will forced himself to join in, pushing away thoughts of Tommy lying on the floor of this cell, slicing and slicing the ink cartridge across his wrist, trying to draw blood. How long would it take before the flesh opened? Would the skin get hot from the friction? Would the metal ink cartridge start to get warm? How long would it take for enough blood to leave his body so that his heart stopped?

Will turned back to the faded letters on the wall. He didn’t want to break this new, if false, camaraderie with Knox. “Did you know Allison Spooner?”

“She worked at the diner. All of us knew her.”

“What was she like?”

“Good girl. Got the plates out fast. Didn’t stand around yapping too much.” He looked down at the floor, shaking his head. “She was good-lookin’, too. I guess that’s what caught Tommy’s eye. Poor thing. She probably thought he was harmless.”

“Did she have any friends? A boyfriend?”

“I guess it was just Tommy. Never saw anybody else around her.” He shrugged. “Not like I was paying attention. Wife don’t like it when my eye wanders.”

“Did you see Tommy at the diner a lot?”

Knox shook his head. Will could see his compliance was waning.

“Can I talk to the wife beater?”

“I didn’t touch her!” the prisoner screamed back, slamming his hand against the cell door.

“Thin walls,” Will noted. Knox was leaning against the door, arms crossed. His shirt pocket was bunched up, a silver pen clipped to the material. “Hey, can I borrow your pen?”

Knox touched the clip. “Sorry, this’n’s the only one I got.”

Will recognized the Cross logo. “Nice.”

“Chief Tolliver gave ’em to us the Christmas before he passed.”

“All of you?” Knox nodded. Will gave a low whistle. “That must’ve been expensive.”

“They sure ain’t cheap.”

“It takes a special cartridge, right? A metal one?”

Knox opened his mouth to respond, then caught himself.

Will asked, “Who else got one?”

Knox’s lip curled up in a sneer. “Fuck you.”

“That’s all right. I can ask Sara about it when I see her later.”

Knox stood up straight, blocking the door. “You better be careful, Agent Trent. Last guy who was in this cell didn’t end up too well.”

Will smiled. “I think I can take care of myself.”

“That a fact?”

Will forced a grin. “I hope so, because you seem to be threatening me.”

“You think?” Knox banged on the open cell door. “You hear that, Ronny? Mr. GBI here says I’m threatening him.”

“What’s that, Larry?” the wife beater shouted back. “I can’t hear nothing through these thick walls. Not a goddamn thing.”

WILL SAT IN the interrogation room, trying to breathe through his mouth as he stared at the photocopied pages Sara had given him. Officer Knox had rescinded his offer to hose down the wife beater. Will had endured the man’s stench for twenty minutes before giving up on interrogating him. In Atlanta, Ronny Porter would have sung his way to freedom, giving Will any information he had in order to get out of jail. Small towns were different. Instead of trying to cop a plea, Porter had defended every officer in the building. He’d even waxed poetic on Marla Simms, who apparently used to be his Sunday school teacher.

Will spread out the files, trying to put them into some sort of order. Tommy Braham’s confession was handwritten, the copy dark from the yellow paper. He set that aside. The police report was like every form Will had ever handled at the GBI. Boxes provided space for dates, times, weather, and other details of the crime, to be written in by hand. The suicide note had caught the light from the copier, the letters blurring.

There were two other pages that were photocopies of notepaper from a small pad, the sort of thing most cops carried in their back pocket. Four sheets of the smaller paper had been lined up to fit on one copied page. In all, there were eight pages that had been torn from the notepad. Will studied the positioning. He could see faint marks where the lined paper had been taped to a bigger sheet for copying. Instead of jagged edges at the top where the paper had been ripped from the spiral, there was a clean line as if someone had used scissors to cut them out. This he found strangest of all—not just because cops didn’t tend to be neat, but because he had never in his career known a police officer to tear pages out of their notebook.

The arrest warrant was the last page in the pile, but this part of the process, at least, was computerized. All the spaces were printed in a typewriter font. The suspect’s name was at the top, his address and home phone. Will found the lined box for Tommy’s employer. He leaned over the form, squinting his eyes as he held his finger under the tiny letters. His mouth moved as he tried to sound out the word. Will was tired from the monotonous drive. The letters mixed around. He blinked, wishing there was more light in the room.