Unseen by Karin Slaughter Page A

neck.
    “Fred Leroy Zachary,” Branson provided. “He did eight years for assault with a deadly, then pulled a full dime off a kidnap and rape. Known around town as a muscle for hire. He’s alive, but just barely. His jaw was broken. Spine fractured. Ribs broken. Whole body’s in a cast. Mouth’s wired shut. He can’t talk, and even if he could, his lawyer won’t let him.”
    Amanda said, “Well, you can’t accuse Adams of not being thorough. What did she have to say for herself?”
    Branson turned cagey again. “Not much. Doctors said she was in shock. They had to treat her at the scene. She sketched out the highlights—one armed male breached the house. Long was shot in the back. Sawed-off shotgun, so the pellets spread. Adams took the hammer out of Long’s tool belt and defended herself. A second armed male came at her. There was a struggle, but she managed to neutralize both intruders.”
    Branson seemed to be finished. Amanda asked, “That’s it?”
    “Like I said, Adams was under medical care for severe shock. She saw her husband get shot. Fought for her life. His life, too, come to that. We’ll go back at her later, but from where I’m sitting, she’s earned some breathing room.”
    Amanda silently steepled her fingers together underneath her chin. Faith kept writing in her notebook, but Will could practically see her ears perk up. There was a big piece missing from the end of the story. Either Lena had lied about Will being at the house or Branson was lying about what Lena had told her.
    Amanda said, “Faith will go back at Adams. She’s had enough breathing room, I think. We need to know exactly what happenedlast night. You may not like it, but it’s our case and that’s how it’s going to be.”
    Branson’s jaw tightened, but she gave a single nod of agreement.
    Faith broke the tension this time. “Major, maybe you can fill in some basic details for me?” She turned to a fresh page in her notebook. “We’re talking a residential area?” Branson nodded. “A shotgun goes off in the middle of the night. Anybody see anything? Hear anything?”
    Branson apparently shared Amanda’s habit of answering questions she didn’t like in her own sweet time. She paused a moment longer than necessary, then said, “The neighbors weren’t sure at first. It’s a fairly rural area. Just past midnight, you hear a shot, maybe it’s poachers, a car backfiring. The area’s heavily wooded. Houses are on five-acre lots. We’re not like y’all here in the city, stacked up on top of each other like rats.”
    Faith nodded, ignoring the dig, or maybe agreeing with it. “Who called the police?”
    “A neighbor who lives four doors down. You’ve got her name and statement on the zip drive if your boss can figure out how to open it.” She glanced Amanda’s way, then turned back to Faith. “There’s two other cops on that street. One’s married to a paramedic, the other lives with a firefighter. That’s the only reason Long didn’t die at the scene. His heart had stopped by the time they got there. They took turns working on him until the ambulance arrived. Took almost twenty minutes.”
    Amanda said, “If Long comes around, Faith will interview him to see if his statement matches his wife’s.”
    Branson waited another long moment. The corner of her lips quivered, then curved into a smile. “Aren’t you curious how I know for a fact that your boy over there was in that house last night right when the murders went down?”
    Will supposed he was the boy in question. He thought about the hammer, the way the blood was still warm when he grabbedthe metal with his bare hand. The sworls of his fingerprints in the dried blood would’ve been like a neon light to a cop as seasoned as Denise Branson.
    Amanda breathed out a heavy sigh. “I think we can call Will a man, since he’s the only thing that stopped your detective from hammering a suspect to death. A second suspect, that is.”
    Branson snapped,