He kept pushing for possibilities, flipping the puzzle pieces around in his mind.
What if the V is an N? Which could make the zigzag a Z.
He wrote: INZ. “That doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.” He stood, needing a break and to send the jacket back to the lab. He also wanted to get the search for “Ivan” underway, just in case anything popped from the name. He eyeballed the jacket from his peripheral as he passed, and then stopped cold. From the opposite angle, the lines on the I turned it into an H. Using the new angle, he reevaluated the letters.
“Holy shit,” he said on an exhale, and bolted from the room.
MARTIN Chapter 29 | 5:15 AM, December 2, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
WITHIN MINUTES, MARTIN HAD SHUTTLED Captain Barrow into the incident room without telling him why. Martin dipped his chin low, studying his superior officer from under his brow, his thumb pressed against his lips to keep him from blurting out his theory. Captain planted a hand on either side of Eddie’s blood-streaked jacket. Martin noticed how Captain’s fingers quivered. Withdrawal, he’d wager. They’d barely slept since Ama had been found, much less had time for a vice. Martin was grateful. If he’d had a free hour, he’d have driven to the nearest pharmacy and done his best to convince somebody behind the counter to refill a prescription—anything he had—one more time. Hell, one more pill would do.
It would do a lot, Martin told himself. None of it good.
He exhaled through his nose.
“Am I boring you, Detective?” Captain asked.
“No, sir.”
“Why don’t you just tell me what you see so we can move on with our lives?”
“I don’t want to color your judgment, Captain. I may be wrong about Eddie Stevens. I don’t want to lead you here, too.”
“Well, I don’t see shit. So spit it out or I’m leaving. I have a press conference in thirty minutes at the hospital for the six AM news cycle and a date with a shower and my bed after that.”
“I see ‘Hazel,’ sir. The first three letters, anyway.”
Captain narrowed his lids and craned his neck. He traced above the fading lines with his pointer finger, and his lips morphed as he mouthed each letter.
“I don’t see it.”
“If you look from this angle—”
“No, Martin. I see what you’re trying to see. But it’s not there. You’re reading too much into this. Ama Chaplin’s hands were covered in blood. She was probably clawing at his jacket or trying to sit up.”
“Then why isn’t there a handprint?”
“Martin. Drop it.”
“Ama must have come into contact with Hazel. Or at the very least, she knew about her. These cases are related, whether Eddie is the real perp here or not.”
Captain rounded the table and marched toward Martin, stopping only when the toes of his dress shoes were inches from Martin’s sneakers. “You leave this alone, Martin. Hazel’s gone. If Eddie is the reason why, he already knows she’s gone. If he isn’t, then let that poor man believe his daughter was swallowed up by Cold River. If you tell him Ama was writing ‘Hazel’ in blood on his jacket and that the sick fuck who burned lines into that woman’s thigh was the last thing his daughter ever knew or saw or felt, you think that’s going to bring him peace? We need to bring in bigger brass. You jumped on your first instinct, and now you think you were wrong. Every path after this is dirty, and you know it. We need fresh eyes, more resources, and people who have worked this kind of case before.”
“All due respect, but we’re not even a full day out. And I have worked this kind of case before. This is what I’m good at.”
Captain paused. His cheeks sucked inward, pulling at the bags swelling under his eyes. “Not good enough,” he said.
MICHAEL Chapter 30 | June 1993 | Atlanta, Georgia
WIND HOWLS DOWN DEKALB AVENUE, throwing rain sideways. Raindrops assault windowpanes and passing cars, pound themselves against the asphalt in a frenzy of mist. I duck under the awning of a pay-by-the-hour motel.
A woman steps out the door. Boots encase her calves nearly to her knees, and a corset binds her torso, flesh squeezing out both ends. The only thing free is her auburn hair, which tumbles down her back and sails with the wind.
She glances at me and catches me staring.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she says. It’s the first full sentence anyone has spoken to me since I stepped off the Greyhound bus that brought me to Atlanta. She lights a cigarette and brings it to her lips. A silver crescent moon on her ring finger catches my eye, the red stone in the middle the color of dried blood. “I’m a singer.” She exhales a stream of gray smoke. “We’re all just trying to make it, you know what I mean?”
I have no idea what she means.
“How old are you, boy?” she asks, and I imagine her vocal cords vibrating in her throat.
I stare at her without answering.
“You got a place to stay?”
I shake my head.
She watches me for three seconds more, something between contempt and concern in her gaze, and in this moment, in her brown eyes, I see my mother in the year before my sister died, hear her voice in my head. Get out of my house, Michael. I can’t stand the sight of you. Put on your jacket before you go or you’ll catch a cold.
“Look, you can’t stay here. Not unless you’re paying for a room or my time,” the woman says, bringing my mind back to the motel stoop. Her eyes are darker now, shifting to their corners. “I said it’s time for you to leave.”
There’s agitation brimming at her edges, like fish panicking just under the surface of water. It draws alarm out of me, and I step back.
She exhales two jets of smoke through her nose before dropping her cigarette on the ground and stamping it out. “If you need somewhere dry to stand, there are some down-luck fellas three blocks from here. They keep a fire going, and there are a couple of empty buildings on the alley. Three blocks,” she repeats, and points a long finger down the street. “Tell them Garnet sent you.”
Three. Without further hesitation, I hunch my shoulders to my ears and hurry through the rain. I reach the corner of the third block and cast my gaze down the alley. Tucked behind a dumpster near the end of the street, three people huddle around a burning barrel. I silently count cracks in the asphalt as I walk down the center of the alley.
My fingers squeeze the end of my father’s stick, and I see one pair of eyes take notice. I back away, the flesh between my shoulder blades tensing. All at once, the three pairs of eyes ringing the burning barrel lift to stare beyond me.
I turn in time to see the end of the swinging pipe six inches from my face. Then there is a sound like a dropped egg, the flood of iron on my tongue, and iridescent bursts in front of my eyes. I am spitting and writhing. Hands clutch and pull and yank. I roll to my back, clawing upward, my vision doubled and blurring, and watch the pipe come down once more.
* * *
My eyelids crack open. My head throbs, pushing at the backs of my eyeballs, drawing bile from my stomach like the tide to the moon. I roll to my side and dry heave. A chill sets in, plunging deep the moment it touches me, and I realize my coat and backpack are gone. My shoes and socks have been removed.