Free Unseen by Karin Slaughter Page A

us?”
    Amanda said, “More than we’re not telling her, which I find highly annoying.” She raised her voice. “Caroline, get me Gil Gonzalo at the FDLE.”
    “He’s on central time,” Caroline shouted back. “Give it another half hour unless you want to talk to a junior officer.”
    “I guess they work when they please down there,” Amanda grumbled. “Will, your report said Dell approached you around eleven-thirty last night. He took you straight to the job?”
    “I was just coming off my hospital shift. He stopped me in the parking lot.” Will hadn’t considered the timing until now. “Maybe he needed me to fill in for someone else.”
    Faith asked, “How did Dell pitch the job?”
    “He asked if I wanted to make five hundred bucks cash for keeping my mouth shut and my eyes open.”
    Faith said, “Five hundred bucks is a lot of money for being a lookout. You could get a guy killed for less than that.”
    “You’re right.” Will was beginning to think he’d missed a lot of things last night. Adrenaline and sheer panic had never enhanced anyone’s short-term memory.
    He said, “I noticed when they were outside Lena’s house that they all shook hands. Not the shoulder-bump bro thing, just a formal handshake, like they didn’t know each other well.”
    Faith twisted her lips to the side as she considered the situation. “So, the plan was thrown together at the last minute. They didn’t have a crew in place.”
    Will said, “Dell hangs out at a place called Tipsie’s just about every night. It’s a strip joint off the highway, caters mostly to bikers and ex-cons. I went with him a few times to build a rapport.”
    “A rapport?” Faith echoed.
    Will ignored her sarcasm. “If you’re looking for a guy to help you kill a couple of cops in Macon, Tipsie’s is the place to go.”
    “I’ll check it out,” Faith said. “Hopefully, Macon PD will be more helpful than Major Branson. There’s something a little too go-getter about her for me. Who wears all their ribbons for adowntown meeting? And what was that snickery smile on her lips?”
    Amanda told them, “This sounds like a character-building exercise. Attempted murder on two cops, one man dead, another critically wounded, and the chief sends her to brief us? That’s not a plum assignment.”
    “Especially if she’s been up since one-shitty in the morning,” Faith pointed out. “For what it’s worth, Branson sounds to me like she’s on-side with Lena. Could be an ‘us against the world’ thing, like they’re both the same kind of bad.”
    “Maybe,” Amanda allowed. “Misery loves company.”
    Will tuned out their voices. He thought about last night, the drive to Lena’s house. Dell had been fidgety, but that was pretty much his default. He’d played with the radio, tapped his fingers on the dash, the steering wheel, his leg, as he drove one-handed toward what they both thought was an easy score. Dell had talked the entire time: about the weather, his ailing mother who lived in Texas, a woman at the hospital he was dying to sleep with. All Will had to do was nod occasionally to keep him going. Dell didn’t need any more encouragement. He actually talked too much for his own good. Major Branson had been fed the story backward. Tony Dell was the original target of Will’s investigation. His first day undercover, Dell would not shut up about a big-time dealer named Big Whitey.
    Will realized that Amanda and Faith had gone silent.
    Faith asked, “What is it?”
    Will shook his head, but he still told them, “Big Whitey.”
    “It can’t be coincidence,” Amanda said. “You’re down there for Dell. Dell turns you on to Big Whitey. Big Whitey kills cops. A little over a week later, two police officers are attacked.”
    Will said, “It’s the timing that’s bothering me. If I’m going to kill some cops, I don’t do it on the fly. I plan it out. I follow them around. I figure out what their habits are. It would take several