But not him. Not this man. Not this devil.

Lucy wanted him to fuck her. She wanted him to beat her. She wanted him to do anything but the loathsome routine she had to endure every day. The way he brushed her hair and teeth. The way he bathed her. The chaste way he used the rag to wash between her legs. The gentle pats of the towel as he dried her. The look of pity every time her eyes opened and closed. And the praying. The constant praying.

“Wash away your sins. Wash away your sins.” It was his mantra. He said nothing directly to her. He only spoke to God, as if He would listen to an animal like this man. Lucy asked why—why her? Why this? She screamed at him. She begged him. She offered him anything, and all he said was, “Wash away your sins.”

Lucy had grown up with prayer. Over the years, she had often found solace in religion. The smell of a burning candle or the taste of wine could send her back to the church pew, where she happily sat between her mother and father. Her brother, Henry, would scribble crude drawings on the bulletin, bored nearly to death, but Lucy loved listening to the preacher extol the vast rewards of a godly life. On the streets, it gave her comfort to think about those sermons from long ago. Even as a sinner, she was not completely without salvation. The crucifixion meant nothing if not to redeem Lucy Bennett’s soul.

But not like this. Never like this. Not the soap and water. Not the blood and wine. Not the needle and thread.

There was penance, and then there was torture.

four

July 7, 1975

MONDAY

Amanda Wagner let out a long sigh of relief as she drove out of her father’s Ansley Park neighborhood. Duke had been in rare form this morning. He’d begun a litany of complaints the moment Amanda walked through his kitchen door and not stopped until she was waving goodbye from behind the wheel of her car. Feckless veterans looking for handouts. Gas prices through the roof. New York City expecting the rest of the country to bail them out. There was not one story in the morning paper about which Duke did not share his opinion. By the time he’d started listing the seemingly endless faults of the newly organized Atlanta Police Department, Amanda was only half listening, nodding occasionally to keep his temper from turning in the wrong direction.

She cooked his breakfast. She kept his coffee mug filled. She emptied his ashtrays. She laid out a shirt and tie on his bed. She wrote down directions for thawing the roast so she could fix his supper after work. Meanwhile, the only thing that made it all bearable was thinking about her tiny studio apartment on Peachtree Street.

The place was less than five minutes away from her father’s house, but it might as well be on the moon. Stuck between the library and the hippie compound along Fourteenth Street, the apartment was one of six units in an old Victorian mansion. Duke had taken one look at the space and snorted that he’d had better accommodations on Midway during the war. None of the windows would properly close. The freezer wasn’t cold enough to make ice. The kitchen table had to be moved before the oven door could be opened. The toilet lid scraped the side of the bathtub.

It was love at first sight.

Amanda was twenty-five years old. She was going to college. She had a good job. After years of begging, she’d finally managed by some miracle to persuade her father to let her move out. She wasn’t exactly Mary Richards, but at least she wouldn’t pass for Edith Bunker anymore.

She slowed her car and took a right turn onto Highland Avenue, then another right into the strip mall behind the pharmacy. The summer heat was almost suffocating, though it was only quarter till eight in the morning. Steam misted from the asphalt as she pulled into a parking space at the far end of the lot. Her hands were sweating so badly that she could barely grip the steering wheel. Her pantyhose were cutting into her waist. The back of her shirt stuck to the seat. There was a throbbing ache in her neck that was working its way up to her temples.

Still, Amanda rolled down her shirtsleeves and buttoned the tight cuffs at her wrists. She dragged her purse off the passenger’s seat, thinking the bag got heavier every time she lifted it. She reminded herself that it was better than what she was wearing on patrol this time last year. Undergarments. Pantyhose. Black socks. Navy-colored, polyester-blend pants. A man’s cotton shirt that was so big the breast pockets tucked below her waist. Underbelt. Metal hooks. Outer belt. Holster. Gun. Radio. Shoulder mic. Kel-Lite. Handcuffs. Nightstick. Key holder.

It was no wonder the patrolwomen of the Atlanta police force had bladders the size of watermelons. It took ten minutes to remove all the equipment from your waist before you could go to the bathroom—and that was assuming you could sit down without your back going into spasms. The Kel-Lite alone, with its four D-cell batteries and eighteen-inch-long shaft, weighed in at just under eight pounds.

Amanda felt every ounce of the weight as she hefted her purse onto her shoulder and got out of the car. Same equipment, but now that she was a plainclothes officer it was in a leather bag instead of on her hips. It had to be called progress.

Her father had been in charge of Zone 1 when Amanda joined the force. For nearly twenty years, Captain Duke Wagner had run the unit with an iron fist, right up until Reginald Eaves, Atlanta’s first black public safety commissioner, fired most of the senior white officers and replaced them with blacks. The collective outrage had nearly toppled the force. That previous chief John Inman had done basically the same thing in reverse seemed to be a fact lost in everyone’s collective memory. The good ol’ boy network was fine so long as you were one of the lucky few who were dialed in.

Consequently, Duke and his ilk were suing the city for their old jobs back. Maynard Jackson, the city’s first black mayor, was backing his man. No one knew how it would end, though to hear Duke talk, it was just a matter of time before the city capitulated. No matter their color, politicians needed votes, and voters wanted to feel safe. Which explained why the police force gripped the city like a devouring octopus, its tentacles spreading in every direction.

Six patrol zones stretched from the impoverished Southside to the more affluent northern neighborhoods. Spotted within these zones were so-called “Model Cities,” precincts that served the more violent sections of the downtown corridor. There were small pockets of wealth inside Ansley Park, Piedmont Heights, and Buckhead, but a good many of the city’s inhabitants lived in slums, from Grady Homes to Techwood to the city’s most notorious housing project, Perry Homes. This Westside ghetto was so dangerous it warranted its own police force. It was the sort of job returning vets clamored for, more like a war zone than a neighborhood.

The plainclothes and detective units were posted across the zones. There were twelve divisions in all, from vice control to special investigations. Sex crimes was one of the few divisions that allowed women in any numbers. Amanda doubted very seriously her father would’ve let her apply for the unit had he still been on the force when she submitted her application. She cringed to think what would happen if Duke won his lawsuit and got reinstated. He’d likely have her back in uniform performing crossing-guard duties in front of Morningside Elementary.

But that was a long-term problem, and Amanda’s day—if it was like any other—would be filled with short-term problems. The primary issue each morning was with whom she would be partnered.

The federal Law Enforcement Assistance Association grant that had created the Atlanta police sex crimes division required all teams to be comprised of three-officer units that were racially and sexually integrated. These rules were seldom followed, because white women could not ride alone with black men, black women—at least the ones who wanted to keep their reputations—did not want to ride with black men, and none of the blacks wanted to ride with any man who was white. Every day was a battle just to figure out who was going to work with whom, which was ludicrous considering that most of them changed partners once they were out on the streets anyway.