"Right," Jeffrey said. "We've got some questions we need to ask Gordon. In exchange for his being forthcoming, we'll drop the pending charges on the drug bust."

"Fuck that," Gordon snarled. "I told you those weren't my pants."

Jeffrey exchanged a look with Buddy. "I don't have time for this. We'll just send him up to the Atlanta pen and cut our losses."

"What kind of questions?" Buddy asked.

Jeffrey dropped the bomb. Buddy had been expecting a simple plead on yet another drug charge against one of the kids from the college. Jeffrey kept his tone even when he said, "About the death of Sibyl Adams and the rape of Julia Matthews."

Buddy seemed to register a little shock. His face turned white, making his black eye patch stand out even more against his pale face. He asked Gordon, "Do you know anything about this?"

Frank answered for him. "He was the last person to see Julia Matthews in the library. He was her boyfriend."

Gordon piped up, "I told you, they weren't my pants. Get me the fuck out of here."

Buddy gave Gordon the eye. "You'd best be telling them what happened or you're gonna be writing your mama letters from jail."

Gordon crossed his arms, obviously angry. "You're supposed to be my lawyer."

"You're supposed to be a human being," Buddy countered, picking up his briefcase. "Those girls were beaten and killed, son. You're looking at walking on a felony possession by simply doing what you should be doing in the first place. If you got a problem with that, you need to get yourself another lawyer."

Buddy stood, but Gordon stopped him. "She was in the library, okay?"

Buddy sat back down, but he kept his briefcase in his lap.

"On campus?" Frank asked.

"Yeah, on campus," Gordon snapped. "I just ran into her, okay?"

"Okay," Jeffrey answered.

"So, I started talking to her, you know. She wanted me back. I could tell that."

Jeffrey nodded, though he imagined Julia Matthews had been very upset to see Gordon in the library.

"Anyway, we talked, got a little lip action going, if you know what I mean." He nudged Buddy, who moved away. "Made some plans to see each other later on."

"Then what?" Jeffrey asked.

"Then, you know, she left. That's what I'm saying, she just left. Got her books and all, said she would meet me later, then she was out of there."

Frank asked, "Did you see anyone following her? Anyone suspicious?"

"Naw," he answered. "She was alone. I would've noticed if anyone was watching her, you know? She was my girl. I kept an eye on her."

Jeffrey said, "You can't think of anyone she might know, not just a stranger, who was making her uncomfortable? Maybe she was dating somebody after y'all broke up?"

Gordon gave him the same look he would give a stupid dog. "She wasn't seeing anybody. She was in love with me."

"You don't remember seeing any strange cars on campus?" Jeffrey asked. "Or vans?"

Gordon shook his head. "I didn't see anything, okay?"

Frank asked, "Let's go back to the meeting. You were supposed to see her later on?"

Gordon supplied, "She was supposed to meet me behind the agri-building at ten."

"She didn't show up?" Frank said.

"No," Gordon answered. "I waited around, you know. Then, I got kind of pissed off and I went to find her. I went to her room to see what was up, and she wasn't there."

Jeffrey cleared his throat. "Was Jenny Price there?"

"That whore?" Gordon waved this off. "She was probably out fucking half the science team."

Jeffrey felt himself bristle over this. He had a problem with men who saw all women as whores, not least because this attitude usually went hand in hand with violence toward women. "So, Jenny wasn't there," Jeffrey summarized. "Then what did you do?"

"I went back to my dorm." He shrugged. "I went to bed."

Jeffrey sat back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. "What aren't you telling us, Ryan?" he asked. "Because the way I'm looking at it, the 'forthcoming' part of our deal isn't being met here. The way I'm looking at it, that orange jumper you're wearing is gonna be on your back for the next ten years."

Gordon stared at Jeffrey with what Jeffrey assumed the young punk thought was a menacing look. "I told you everything."

"No," Jeffrey said. "You didn't. You're leaving something out that's pretty important, and I swear to God we're not gonna leave this room until you tell me what you know."

Gordon turned shifty-eyed. "I don't know anything."

Buddy leaned over and whispered something that made Gordon's eyes go as round as two walnuts. Whatever the attorney had said to his client, it worked.

Gordon said, "I followed her out of the library."

"Yeah?" Jeffrey encouraged.

"She met up with this guy, okay?" Gordon fiddled with his hands in front of him. Jeffrey wanted to reach over and throttle the punk. "I tried to catch up with them, but they were fast."

"Fast meaning how?" Jeffrey asked. "Was she walking with him?"

"No," Gordon said. "He was carrying her."

Jeffrey felt a knot in the pit of his stomach. "And you didn't think this was suspicious, her being carried off by a guy?"

Gordon's shoulders went up to his ears. "I was mad, okay? I was mad at her."

"You knew she wouldn't meet you later on," Jeffrey began, "so you followed her."

He gave a slight shrug that could have been a yes or no.

"And you saw this guy carrying her off?" Jeffrey continued.

"Yeah."

Frank asked, "What did he look like?"

"Tall, I guess," Gordon said. "I couldn't see his face, if that's what you mean."

"White? Black?" Jeffrey quizzed.

"Yeah, white," Gordon supplied. "White and tall. He was wearing dark clothes, all black. I couldn't really see them except that she was wearing this white shirt, right? It kind of caught the light, so she showed up, but not him."

Frank said, "Did you follow them?"

Gordon shook his head.

Frank was silent, his jaw taut with anger. "You know she's dead now, don't you?"

Gordon looked down at the table. "Yeah, I know that."

Jeffrey opened the file and showed Gordon the printout. He had used a black marker to cross out Wright's name, but the rest of the statistics were left uncovered. "This the guy?"

Gordon glanced down. "No."

"Look at the fucking photograph," Jeffrey ordered, his tone so loud that Frank started beside him.

Gordon did as he was told, putting his face so close to the printout that his nose almost touched it. "I don't know, man," he said. "It was dark. I couldn't see his face." His eyes scanned down the vitals on Wright. "He was tall like this. About this build. It could've been him, I guess." He gave a casual shrug. "I mean, Jesus, I wasn't paying attention to him. I was watching her."

The drive to Atlanta was long and tedious, with nothing but the occasional patch of trees with the requisite kudzu to break the monotony. He tried twice to call Sara at home and leave some kind of message, but her machine wouldn't pick up, even after twenty rings. Jeffrey felt a rush of relief followed by an overwhelming shame. The closer he got to the city, the more he convinced himself that he was doing the right thing. He could call Sara when he knew something. Maybe he could call her with the news that Jack Allen Wright had met with an unfortunate accident involving Jeffrey's gun and Wright's chest.

Even going eighty, it took Jeffrey four hours before he got off 20 and onto the downtown connector. He passed Grady Hospital a little ways past the split, and felt tears wanting to come again. The building was a monster looming over the interstate in what Atlanta traffic reporters called the Grady Curve. Grady was one of the largest hospitals in the world. Sara had told him that during any given year the emergency clinics saw over two hundred thousand patients. A recent four-hundred-million-dollar renovation made the hospital look like part of the set for a Batman movie. In typical City of Atlanta politics, the renovation had been the subject of an explosive investigation, kickbacks and payoffs reaching as far up as city hall.