Cop Town Read Free Page B

on. Eat.”
    Lilly never argued with Terry. She sat down and picked at her breakfast.
    Terry snapped the paper as he turned the page. Maggie could only see the top of his head, the square crewcut that showcased his receding hairline. He needed glasses. His forehead wrinkled as he squinted at the football scores.
    A loud crackle of static came from the kitchen. Jimmy’s old transistor radio. A newsman’s voice crackled from the tinny speaker. “…  reports another officer killed in the line of …” The voice drained away as Delia turned the volume down low.
    Maggie knew her mother was right about one thing: they didn’t need the news to tell them what they already knew. In the last three months, four patrol officers had been murdered in the early morning hours near the downtown area of Five Points. They had been in pairs. Nobody patrolled downtown alone. The first two were found in an alley—they’d been forced down on their knees and executed with one bullet each tothe head. The other two were found behind the service entrance to the Portman Motel. Same modus operandi. Same lack of leads. No witnesses. No bullet casings. No fingerprints. No suspects.
    Around the station, they’d started calling the killer the Atlanta Shooter.
    “I put on a fresh pot.” Delia sat down at the table, something she rarely did for long. She was turned in her chair, facing Terry—another thing she rarely did. “Tell me what really happened, Terrance.”
    Terrance. The word hung in the air alongside the smoke and bacon grease.
    Terry made a show of his reluctance. He sighed. He methodically folded the newspaper. He put it down on the table. He lined it up to the edge. Instead of answering Delia’s question, he made a gun with his hand and put it to the side of his face. Nobody said anything until he pulled the trigger.
    Lilly whispered, “Jesus.”
    For once, no one corrected her language.
    Terry said, “Nothing Jimmy could do. He ran twenty blocks with Don slung over his shoulder. Got to the hospital, but it was too late.”
    Maggie thought about her brother running all that way on his bad knee. “Jimmy wasn’t—”
    “Jimmy’s fine.” Terry’s voice sounded like he was humoring them. “What he doesn’t need is a bunch of hens squawking around.”
    With that, he opened his newspaper again and buried his nose back in the pages.
    He hadn’t really answered Delia’s question. He’d just given the highlights, likely the same details you could hear on the radio. Terry knew exactly what he was doing to them. He’d been a Marine during the war. His unit specialized in psychological warfare. He would draw this out just because he could.
    Instead of returning to the kitchen, Delia took a packet of Kools from her apron pocket and shook one out. Her hand trembled as she fumbled with her lighter. She looked calmer once she had the cigarette lit. Smoke furled from her nose. Every wrinkle on Delia Lawson’s face came fromsucking on cigarettes—the crepe-like lines around her mouth, the sagging jawline, the deep indentation between her eyebrows. Even her hair was streaked with the same smoke gray that came out of her Kools. She was forty-five years old, but on a good day, she looked around sixty. Right now, she looked twice that, like she was already in her grave.
    Like Don Wesley would soon be.
    Maggie knew her brother’s partner was a grunt just back from Vietnam, unable to do any job that didn’t require him to carry a gun. His people were from lower Alabama. He rented an apartment off Piedmont Avenue. He drove a burgundy-colored Chevelle. He had a girlfriend—a flower-child American Indian who talked about “the man” and didn’t complain when Don hit her because he’d seen so much bad shit in the jungle.
    And none of that mattered anymore because he was dead.
    Terry banged his mug down on the table. Coffee splashed onto the white tablecloth. “Any of this for me?”
    Delia stood up. She took his plate and started