Criminal

ten

July 12, 1975

SATURDAY

Amanda had never been particularly adept at lying, especially where her father was concerned. Since childhood, Duke could look at her a certain way and Amanda would burst into tears, pouring out her soul no matter the consequences. She couldn’t even begin to predict how angry he would be if he found out Amanda was spending the afternoon at Evelyn Mitchell’s house. It reminded her of all those stories from the Nixon scandal. The cover-up always brought you down.

And this one was a doozy. Not only had Amanda completely fabricated a church function, she’d dragged Vanessa Livingston into the mix, exacting a promise that the other woman would support the story no matter what. Amanda could only hope that Duke was too wrapped up in his court case to dig too deeply into her story. He’d been on the phone with his lawyer all morning. The state supreme court’s decision for Lars Oglethorpe had shifted the winds at police headquarters. Duke had barely registered Amanda’s presence as she cleaned his house and ironed his shirts.

All she wanted to do now was see Evelyn with her own two eyes to make certain the other woman was all right. After leaving Techwood yesterday, neither of them had said a word to each other. Evelyn had dropped off Amanda at the station and driven away without even saying goodbye. What Rick Landry had done to her in the hallway seemed to be stuck in her throat.

Amanda pulled out onto Monroe Drive. She wasn’t often on this side of Piedmont Heights. In her mind, she still thought of it as barren farmland, though the area had been given over to industry some time ago. As a child, she’d visited Monroe Gardens with her mother, where they’d peruse the nursery for hours picking out pansies and roses to plant in the backyard. The land had been turned into office buildings for the Red Cross, but she could still recall the rows of daffodils.

She took a left onto Montgomery Ferry. Plaster’s Bridge narrowed the road to one lane. The Plymouth’s tires bumped over the rutted concrete. A cold sweat came on as she passed Ansley Golf Club, even though she knew her father wasn’t playing today. She followed the dogleg to Lionel Lane and went right on Friar Tuck, which cut straight through the heart of Sherwood Forest.

Evelyn’s house was one of those ranch-style homes they’d built by the thousands for returning veterans. One story with a carport on the side, just like the house next door, which in turn was an exact duplicate of the next house, and the next.

Amanda parked on the street behind Evelyn’s station wagon and checked herself in the rearview mirror. The heat had done her makeup no favors. Her hair was flat and lifeless. She had planned on washing it today, but the thought of sitting under the dryer was nauseating and she couldn’t let her hair dry naturally because it would sour.

She cut the engine and heard the whir of a circular saw. The driveway was taken up with a black Trans Am and a convertible Ford Galaxie like Perry Mason used to drive. As she approached the house, Amanda saw that a shed was being built on the open side of the carport. The wall supports and roof were up, but little else. There was a man in the carport leaning over a piece of plywood resting on a pair of sawhorses. He was dressed in cutoff jeans and no shirt. The logo on his orange sun visor was easily recognizable, though it wasn’t until Amanda was halfway up the drive that she could make out the Florida Gator.

“Hello!” he called, setting down the saw. Amanda guessed this was Bill Mitchell, though she realized that somewhere in the back of her mind she had imagined a more glamorous man. He was plain looking, about Evelyn’s height with wispy brown hair and a bit of a belly. His skin was bright red from the sun. There was a welcoming smile on his face, though Amanda felt immensely uncomfortable talking to a man who wasn’t fully clothed.

“Amanda.” He held out his hand as he walked toward her. “I’m Bill. So pleased to meet you. Ev’s told me a lot about you.”

“You as well.” Amanda shook his sweaty hand. Sawdust was stuck to his chest and arms.

“Let’s get out of this sun. It’s a scorcher.” He cupped his hand to her elbow as he led her into the shade of the carport. Amanda saw a picnic table laid out in the backyard. The Weber was already belching smoke. She felt a brief flash of guilt. She’d been so worried about Evelyn’s state of mind that she’d forgotten this was a party. She should’ve brought a hostess gift.

“Bill?” Evelyn came into the carport holding a jar of mayonnaise. She was barefoot, dressed in a bright yellow sundress. Her hair was perfect. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, but she didn’t seem to need any. “Oh, Amanda. You made it.” She handed the mayonnaise to her husband. “Sweetheart, put a shirt on. You’re red as a lobster.”

Bill rolled his eyes at Amanda. He popped open the jar before handing it back to his wife.

Evelyn asked Amanda, “Did you meet Kenny? Bill, where’s Kenny?” She didn’t give him time to answer. “Kenny?”

“Under here,” a deep voice called from beneath the shed. Amanda saw a pair of hairy legs, then cutoff jeans, then a man’s naked torso as Kenny pushed himself out from beneath the plywood floor. He smiled at Amanda, said, “Hello,” then told Bill, “Looks like we could use some more bracing.”

Evelyn explained, “They’re building a shed so we have a safe place to keep my gun.”

“And potting soil,” Kenny added. He held out his hand to Amanda. “Kenny Mitchell. I’m this character’s brother.”

Amanda shook his hand. It was warm. The palms were rough. She felt herself blushing in the heat. Kenny Mitchell was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen outside of a Hollywood movie. His chest and stomach rippled with muscles. His mustache was trimmed above what could only be called sensual lips.

He said, “Ev, you didn’t tell me your friend was so pretty.”

The blush ignited into a raging fire.

“Kenny!” Evelyn chastised. “You’re embarrassing her.”

“Sorry, ma’am.” He winked at Amanda as he dug into his pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. Amanda forced herself not to look at the trail of hair that started at his navel and worked its way down.

Evelyn said, “Kenny’s a pilot with Eastern. He looks like that hunk from the Safeguard commercials, doesn’t he?” She motioned for Amanda to follow her into the house. “We’ll leave the boys to it.”

Bill stopped them, telling Amanda, “Thanks for taking care of my girl yesterday. She’s an awful driver. Too busy checking her makeup to look at the road.”

Evelyn spoke before Amanda could. “I told him about almost hitting that man in the street.” She put her hand to her chest, the exact spot where Rick Landry had jabbed her with the Kel-Lite. “The steering wheel left a terrible bruise.”

“You should be more careful.” Bill patted his wife on her bottom. “Now, get inside before I ravage you.”

Evelyn kissed his cheek. “Be sure to drink plenty of Coke. You don’t want to get dehydrated in this heat.” She hugged the mayonnaise jar to her stomach as she walked across the carport. Amanda followed her into the house. Her plan was to ask Evelyn why she had lied to her husband, but the cool temperature inside left her momentarily speechless. For the first time in months, Amanda wasn’t sweating.

“You have air-conditioning?”

“Bill bought it when I got pregnant, and neither one of us can give it up.” Evelyn put the jar on the counter by a large Tupperware bowl that was already filled with chopped potatoes, eggs, and peppers. She stirred in the mayonnaise, saying, “Potato salad is the only thing I can make. I’m not a fan, but Bill loves it.” The smile on her face seemed almost rapturous. “Isn’t he wonderful? He’s a perfect Libra.”

Bill was a very happy Libra, judging by Evelyn’s beautiful home. The kitchen was extremely modern—white laminate countertops with matching avocado green appliances. The chrome handles on the cabinets gleamed in the sunlight. The linoleum had a subtle flower pattern. The Perma-Prest ruffled curtains on the window filtered a soft light. There was a room off the kitchen with a washer and dryer. A pair of toddler’s jeans hung from the indoor clothesline. It was the sort of thing Amanda thought only existed in magazines.

Evelyn put the potato salad in the refrigerator. “Thanks for not telling Bill about—” She put her hand to her chest. “He would only worry.”

“Are you all right?”

“Oh.” She sighed, but she didn’t add more. She put the mayonnaise by the salad, but stopped shy of shutting the refrigerator door. “You want a beer?”

Amanda had never tasted beer in her life, but obviously Evelyn needed something. “All right.”

Evelyn took two cans of Miller out of the door. She pulled the rings and tossed them into the trashcan. She was handing Amanda one of the cans when the circular saw started up again. “In here.” Evelyn waved for Amanda to follow her through the dining room, then into a large foyer.

The living room was a step down. The temperature was almost frigid, courtesy of the large air-conditioning unit mounted into one of the windows. Amanda felt the sweat on her back start to chill. Her shoes sank into the lush ocher-colored carpet. The ceiling was beautifully textured. There was a chintz green and yellow sofa. Matching wingback chairs framed the sliding glass doors. The hi-fi was softly playing a track from McCartney. One wall was taken up entirely with books. A console television the size of a baby carriage served as a centerpiece. The only thing out of place was the large tent in the middle of the room.

“We sleep in here because of the AC,” Evelyn explained, taking a place on the couch. Amanda sat down beside her. “We had the unit in the bedroom, but that wasn’t fair to Zeke, and his crib is too big to fit in our room, so …” She took a healthy drink of beer.

Amanda grasped at conversational straws. She was awful at small talk. “How old is he?”

“Almost two.” Evelyn groaned, and Amanda gathered this was a bad thing. “When he was little, Bill would stick him in the bottom drawer of the bureau and shut it when we needed privacy. But now that he’s walking around—” She indicated the tent. “Thank God he’s a heavy sleeper. Though you wouldn’t know it this morning. He was screaming his head off. Bill took him off to his mother’s before I started screaming, too. I’ll change the record over.” She got up and walked to the stereo. “Have you heard what John Lennon’s doing?”

It sounded like he’d put a cat in a bag and swung it around a small room, but Amanda mumbled, “Yes. It’s very interesting.”

“I think Bill loaned the album to Kenny.” She started thumbing through the records, talking to herself. Or maybe she was talking to Amanda. It didn’t seem to matter that Evelyn wasn’t getting a response. “Simon and Garfunkel?” she asked, but she was already putting on the record.

Amanda stared at the cocktail table, trying to think of a good excuse to leave. She could not remember a time in her life when she’d ever felt so out of place. She wasn’t used to socializing, especially not with strangers. There was church, work, school, and her father. Not much else fit between. Evelyn was obviously fine after yesterday’s experience. She had her husband and her brother-in-law. She had her living room sex tent and her beautiful home. She had her Cosmo magazine on the cocktail table where anyone could see it.

Amanda felt her cheeks burning again as she scanned the lurid headlines. It would be just her luck that lightning would strike them both right now and her father would find her in Evelyn Mitchell’s house with a can of beer in her hand and a Cosmopolitan magazine in front of her.

Evelyn sat back down on the couch. “You okay?”

Amanda said, “I should leave.”

“But you just got here.”

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay after what Rick—”

“You smoke?” She reached for a metal box on the cocktail table.

“No, thank you.”

“I gave them up when I got pregnant with Zeke,” Evelyn admitted. “For some reason, I couldn’t stand the taste anymore. Funny, I used to love it.” She returned the box to its place. “Please don’t leave, Amanda. I’m so glad you’re here.”

Amanda felt embarrassed by the statement. And trapped. Now she couldn’t leave without being rude. She returned to the subject of Evelyn’s child because that seemed the only safe topic. “Is Zeke a family name?”

“It’s Ezekiel. I tried not to let Bill shorten it, but …” Her voice trailed off. “Bill’s only criteria for picking a name was asking how it would sound coming out of the stadium speakers when he’s playing for Florida.” Instead of laughing at her joke, she went uncharacteristically quiet. She studied Amanda.

“What is it?”

“Are we still going to do our thing?”

Amanda didn’t have to ask what thing. They were going to stake out the office building to find Mr. Blue Suit. Amanda was going to make a call to the Housing Authority. Evelyn was going to check missing persons reports at the other zones. Yesterday, this had seemed like a solid plan. From this distance, it appeared amateur and dangerous. “Do you think we should go through with it?”

“Do you?”

Amanda could not answer her. After what had happened with Rick Landry, she was scared. She was also worried about all the snooping around she’d done thus far. They had both made calls to people they had no business talking to. Amanda had spent a full morning reading back issues of the Journal and the Constitution. If Duke was right about getting his job back, the first thing he’d do was find out what Amanda had been up to. And he would not be happy.

Evelyn began, “You know, I was thinking …” She put her hand to her chest. Her fingers picked at one of the pearl buttons. “What Landry did to me. What Juice tried to do to you. It’s funny how, black or white, they go straight for what’s between our legs. That’s the sum total of our worth.”

“Or lack of it.” Amanda finished the beer. She felt lightheaded.

Evelyn asked, “Why did you sign up for the job? Was it your dad?”

“Yes,” she answered, though that was only partly true. “I really wanted to be a Kelly girl. Work in a different office every day. Go home to a nice apartment.” She didn’t completely sketch out the fantasy. There would be a husband there, maybe a child, someone she could take care of.

Amanda admitted, “I know it sounds flighty.”

“It sounds better than my reason.” Evelyn sat back against the arm of the couch. “I used to be a mermaid.”

“A what?”

She laughed, seemingly delighted by Amanda’s surprise. “Ever hear of Weeki Wachee Springs? It’s about an hour outside Tampa.”

Amanda shook her head. She’d only been to the Florida Panhandle.

“They gave me the job because I could hold my breath for ninety seconds. And these.” She indicated her breasts. “I swam all day.” She floated her arms up through the air. “And drank all night.” Her arms went down. She was smiling.

All Amanda could think to say was, “Does Bill know?”

“Where do you think we met? He was visiting Kenny at McDill Air Force Base. It was love at first sight.” She rolled her eyes. “I followed him to Atlanta. We got married. I was bored staying home all day, so I decided to try for a job with the state.” She smiled, as if in anticipation of a funny story. “I went downtown to the courthouse to fill out an application. I’d seen an ad in the paper that the tax commissioner was hiring, only I went into the wrong room. And there was this man in a patrol uniform. Such an ass. He took one look at me and said—” she puffed out her chest, “ ‘Little gal, you gots the wrong place. This here room is for the po-lice, and I can tell just by lookin’ at ya that you ain’t got it in ya.’ ”

Amanda laughed. She was a very good mimic. “What did you do?”

“Well, I was furious.” Evelyn straightened her shoulders. “I said, ‘No, sir, you’re the one who’s wrong. I’m here to join the police, and I have every right to take the test.’ ” She sank back down. “I assumed I wouldn’t pass, but a week later, they called me to come back in for the interview. I wasn’t sure whether or not I should go. I hadn’t even told Bill. But I showed up for the interview, and I guess I passed that, because they told me to report to the academy the following week.”

Amanda couldn’t imagine such brazenness. “What did Bill say?”

“He said, ‘Have fun and be careful.’ ” She held out her hands in an open shrug. “And that’s how I became a police officer.”

Amanda shook her head over the story. At least it was better than Vanessa’s, who’d seen a sign on the bulletin board inside the jail, where she was being processed for a DUI.

Evelyn said, “I wasn’t sure I could go back after Zeke.” She took a deep breath. “But then I thought about how good it feels when I roll up on a call and a woman sees that I’m in charge, and she sees that her boyfriend or husband or whoever’s been whaling on her has to answer my questions. It makes me feel like I’m doing something. I guess it’s how the coloreds feel when a black cop shows up. They feel like they’re talking to somebody who understands them.”

Amanda had never thought about it that way, but she supposed it made sense.

“I want to do this. I really want to do it.” Evelyn took her hand. There was an urgency to her tone. “Those girls. Kitty, Mary, Lucy, Jane—rest her soul. They aren’t very different from us, are they? Someone along the way decided that they don’t matter. And that made it true. They don’t matter. Not in the scheme of things. Not when the Rick Landrys of the world can say a Jane Delray committed suicide and the only problem is who’s gonna clean up the mess.”

Amanda didn’t respond, but Evelyn had gotten good at reading her moods.

“What is it?”

Amanda told her, “It wasn’t Jane.”

“What do you mean? How do you know that?”

“I type all of Butch’s reports. It wasn’t Jane who jumped off the building. The woman’s name is Lucy Bennett.”

Evelyn looked confused. She took a moment to process the information. “I don’t understand. Did someone identify her? Did her family come forward?”

“They found Lucy’s purse in apartment C on the fifth floor.”

“That’s Jane’s place.”

“Butch’s notes say that the victim was the only inhabitant. Her purse was on the couch. He found her license and made a positive ID.”

“Did they do fingerprints?”

“Lucy doesn’t have a record. There are no fingerprints to match up.”

“That doesn’t add up. She’s a whore. They all have records.”

“No, it doesn’t add up.” Unless she was new to the game, there was no way Lucy Bennett had avoided an arrest. Some of the girls voluntarily gave themselves up to spend the night in jail. It kept them safe when their pimps were mad.

“Lucy Bennett. Her license was in her purse?” Evelyn thought it through. “There’s no way Jane would leave a license lying around like that. She said those girls have been missing for months, Lucy for a full year. Jane was trying to get their government vouchers. Either Lucy’s license is in Jane’s possession or it’s in a cardboard box at the Five.”

Amanda had already considered this. “Butch always gives me evidence receipts so I can note them in the report.” The purse had been taken to central lockup, where the desk sergeant catalogued every item that went into storage. “According to the receipt, Lucy’s purse didn’t have a license.”

“The desk sergeants never lie about that. It’s their ass if something goes missing.”

“Right.”

“Was there cash in the wallet?”

Amanda was relieved not to be the naïve one for a change. Every purse or wallet homicide checked into lockup was miraculously absent any cash.

“Never mind,” Evelyn allowed. She repeated the girl’s name. “Lucy Bennett. All this time I assumed it was Jane.”

“Does the name mean anything to you? Do you remember a Lucy Bennett from any of the missing persons reports?”

“No.” Evelyn chewed her lip. She stared blankly at Amanda. Finally, she said, “Do you mind if I introduce you to someone?”

Amanda felt a familiar sense of dread. “Who?”

“My neighbor.” She got off the couch. She took Amanda’s beer can and put it beside hers on the table. “She’s worked with APD for years. Her husband’s been banished to the airport. Drinks too much. A real piece of work.” She walked toward the sliding glass door. Amanda had no choice but to follow her. Evelyn kept up her chatter as she walked across the backyard. “Roz is a bit grumpy, but she’s a good gal. She’s seen her share of dead bodies, believe you me. Does it bother you that she’s Jewish?”

Amanda couldn’t figure out which tangent to start with. “Why would it bother me?”

Evelyn hesitated before she continued her trek across the yard. “Anyway, Roz is a crime scene photographer. She develops all the photos at her house. They won’t have her at headquarters because she’s too mouthy. I think she’s been doing the job for ten years now. I’m sure your father’s mentioned her?”

Amanda shook her head when Evelyn glanced back.

Evelyn continued, “I saw her earlier this morning and she was already in a state.” They made their way past a green Corvair parked in the carport. The home was set up similar to Evelyn’s, except there was a screened porch between the carport and house.

Evelyn lowered her voice. “Don’t say anything about her face. Like I said, her husband’s a real piece of work.” She pushed open the screen door and tapped her fingers on the kitchen window. “Hello?” she called, her tone upbeat. “Roz? It’s Ev again.” After a few seconds without a response, she told Amanda, “I’ll go around to the front.”

“I’ll be here.” Amanda rested her hand on the washing machine that took up half the porch. Her sense of discomfort started to amplify as she thought about what she was doing. Amanda had never been inside a Jew’s home before. She didn’t quite know what to expect.

Evelyn was right; Amanda didn’t get out much. She hadn’t been to a party in years. She didn’t drop in on neighbors. She didn’t sit around plush living rooms listening to records and drinking alcohol. There were very few dates in her past. Any boy who wanted to ask her out had to go through Duke first. Not many had survived his scrutiny. There was one boy in high school who’d managed to persuade Amanda to go all the way. Three times, and then she couldn’t take it anymore. She’d been so terrified of getting pregnant that the whole ordeal was only slightly more pleasant than getting a tooth drilled.

Evelyn was back. “I know she’s here.” She knocked on the kitchen door this time. “I don’t know why she isn’t answering.”

Amanda looked at her watch, praying she could think of a good excuse to leave. Standing next to Evelyn Mitchell only heightened her sense of mortification. She felt like an old maid. The clothes Amanda was wearing—a black skirt, short-sleeved white cotton shirt, heels and pantyhose—exemplified the difference. Evelyn looked like a carefree flower child. Kenny must have taken one look at Amanda and pegged her for exactly what she was: a square.

“Hello?” Evelyn knocked on the door again.

From inside the house, a voice called, “Hold your horses, for God’s sakes.”

Evelyn grinned at Amanda. “Don’t let her get to you. She can be nasty.”

The door swung open. An older woman dressed in a brown housecoat and slippers glared at them. Her face was a mess: broken lip, blackened eye. “Why’d you knock on the front door, then run around to the side?”

Evelyn ignored her question. “Roz Levy, this is my friend Amanda Wagner. Amanda, this is Roz.”

Roz narrowed her eyes at Amanda. “Duke Wagner’s girl, right?”

Normally, people said this with respect. There was something close to hate in the woman’s voice.

Evelyn said, “She’s a good gal, Roz. Give her a break.”

Roz was unmoved. She asked Amanda, “You know they call you Wag, right? Always waggin’ your tail, tryin’ to please.”

Amanda felt sucker-punched. Her stomach dropped.

“Oh, hush up, Roz.” Evelyn grabbed Amanda’s arm and pulled her inside the house. “I want Amanda to see the photos you showed me.”

“Doubt she can handle it.”

“Well, I think you’ll be surprised. Our gal can handle more than you think.” She squeezed Amanda’s arm as she dragged her through the kitchen.

The house was nothing like Evelyn’s. There was no coolness from a running air conditioner. As a matter of fact, it felt as if all the air had been pulled out. Heavy brown curtains lined all the windows, blocking the sun. The living room was sunken, three steps down, and decorated in more dark browns. Evelyn pulled Amanda past a large couch that stank of body odor. Beer cans were on the floor beside a reclining chair. Cigarette butts spilled from the ashtray. Three steps back up. Evelyn forced Amanda to walk down the hallway. She only let go when they were in Roz Levy’s spare bedroom.

As with the rest of the house, the room was dark and airless. The closet door hung open. A red lightbulb hung from a cord over various trays and chemicals. A rumpled daybed held cameras of all shapes and sizes. The desk was overflowing with paperwork. There were tennis rackets and roller skates in small piles around the room.

“She does yard sales,” Evelyn explained. “The first time Bill met her, he said she reminded him of the guy who works for Baroness Bomburst in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” She saw Amanda’s expression and said, “Sweetie. Don’t be upset. She says awful things sometimes. That’s just her way.”

Amanda crossed her arms, feeling exposed. Wag. She’d never heard the nickname before. She knew that people around the station considered her a goody-two-shoes. Amanda had come to terms with the reputation. There were worse things they could call her. She wasn’t trim. She wasn’t bad at her job. She was helpful. Courteous.

They called her Wag because she was always trying to please people.

Amanda’s throat worked as she tried to swallow back tears. She did try to please people. Please her father by doing everything he told her to. Please Butch by typing his reports. Please Rick Landry by taking Evelyn away from Techwood. Why had Amanda done that? Why hadn’t she told Landry to stop? He had practically assaulted Evelyn with her own flashlight. She was bruised on her chest and God only knew where else. And Amanda’s response had been to grab her and run away like a puppy with its tail between its legs.

Wagging her tail.

Roz Levy finally deigned to join them. Amanda saw the reason for her delay when she entered the room. She’d stopped to get a Tab.

“So.” Roz pulled the ring from the can. She dropped it into a mason jar on the desk. “You gals playing cops and robbers today?”

“I told you we’re working a case.” Evelyn’s voice was surprisingly terse.

“Look at this one,” Roz told Amanda. “Thinks they’re gonna let her work homicide one day.”

Amanda said, “Maybe they will.”

“Ha.” She didn’t really laugh. “Women’s lib, right? You can do anything you want so long as you do exactly as you’re told.”

Evelyn snapped, “We’re out there on the streets every day just the same as they are.”

“You gals just watch. Think you’re hot shit because they let you go to the academy, gave you a badge and a gun. Mark my word. They only let you climb high enough so it breaks your back when you fall.” She took a sip of her Tab. Her next words were addressed to Amanda. “You think your old man’s gonna win his case?”

Amanda said, “If you’re curious, you should ask him yourself.”

“I already got one black eye, thank you very much.” She put the Tab to her forehead. The can was cold. Sweat dripped down the sides. She glared at Amanda. “What’s your problem?”

“Nothing. I’m just starting to understand why your husband beats you.”

Evelyn gasped.

Roz glared at her. “That so?”

Amanda bit her tongue to stop the apology that wanted to come. She forced herself to stare the woman straight in the eye.

Roz gave a sharp laugh. “Ev’s right. You’re tougher than you look.” She drank from the can, wincing as the liquid went down. There were yellowed bruises around her neck. “Sorry about before. I’ve been having hot flashes all morning. Turns my bitch on.”

Amanda looked at Evelyn, who shrugged.

“The change. You’ll find out for yourselves soon enough.” Roz went inside the closet and started going through a stack of photos. “Shit. I left them in the kitchen.”

Amanda waited until she left the room. “Tell me what she’s talking about?”

“I think it’s something old Jewish women get.”

“Not that. Have you heard other people calling me that name? Wag?”

Evelyn had the grace not to look away. It was Amanda who couldn’t hold her gaze. She stared into the closet, the stacks of photographs showing gory scenes in sharp Kodachrome.

“Photos,” Amanda mumbled. Now it made sense. That’s why Evelyn had brought her here. “Roz was the crime scene photographer at Techwood yesterday.”

“The pictures are bad. Really bad. Jane—I mean Lucy—jumped from the top floor.”

“The roof,” Amanda provided. She had all the details from Butch’s report. “There’s an access ladder at the end of the hall. It goes up to a trapdoor in the roof. Lucy managed to bust off the padlock. Butch thinks she used a hammer. They found one on the floor at the bottom of the ladder. Lucy went to the roof and jumped.”

“Where would she get a hammer?”

“There weren’t any tools lying around the apartment,” Amanda remembered. “Maybe the repairmen used it for the broken skylight?”

“I suppose you’d need a hammer for that.” Evelyn sounded dubious. “Can a hammer bust a padlock?”

“Hammer?” Roz Levy was back. She held a manila envelope in her hand. “Those jackasses think she banged open the roof access with a hammer? Why not just jump out the window? She’s on the top floor. They think she’s so stoned she doesn’t take the easy way out?” She started to open the envelope, but stopped. Her eyes drilled into Amanda. “If you throw up on my carpet, you’re going to have to clean every inch. I don’t care if you have to use a toothpick.”

Amanda nodded, even as she felt a wave of nausea building. Her stomach was already sour. She dreaded to think what the beer would taste like coming back up.

“Are you sure?” Roz asked. “Because I’m not cleaning up after you. It’s bad enough I have to clean up after that jackass I married.”

Amanda nodded again, and the older woman pulled out the photographs. They were image side down.

Roz said, “A fall that high, you land on your feet, your intestines squirt out your ass like icing from a pastry bag.”

Amanda pressed her lips together.

“Your ears bleed. Your face rips off your skull like a mask. Your nose and mouth and eyes—”

“Oh, for goodness sakes.” Evelyn snatched the photos from Roz’s hand. She showed them to Amanda one by one. “Breathe through your mouth,” she coached. “Nice and easy. In and out.”

Amanda did just that, taking in gulps of stale air. She expected to faint. Honestly, she expected to end the afternoon on her hands and knees with a toothpick cleaning Roz Levy’s shag carpet. But neither of those things happened. The photos were unreal. What had happened to Lucy Bennett was too horrific for Amanda’s brain to accept that she was still looking at an actual human being.

Amanda took the photos from Evelyn. They were in vivid color, the flash so bright that every single detail was on display. The girl was fully clothed. The material of her red-checkered cotton shirt was stiff, glued to her skin. Her skirt was hanging down, the waistband broken. Amanda assumed this was subsequent to the fall, as was the girl’s missing left shoe.

She studied Lucy Bennett’s face. Roz had been right about a lot of things, but none more so than what jumping from a five-story building did to the skin on your skull. Lucy’s flesh looked to be dripping from the bone. Her eyes bulged from their sockets. Blood poured from every opening.

It looked fake, like something out of a horror movie.

Evelyn asked, “You okay?”

Amanda said, “Now I see why you thought this was Jane Delray.” Except for the bleached blonde hair, the Halloween mask of her face could’ve belonged to any girl walking the street. The track marks up her arms were the same. The open wounds on her feet. The red pricks along her inner thigh.

Evelyn said, “I wonder if she has family.”

Roz stated the obvious. “Everyone has family. Whether they admit it or not is an entirely different question.”

Amanda ran through the pictures again. There were only five of them. Three were of the girl’s face—left, right, center. One showed a close-up of her mangled body, probably taken from a ladder. The last was a more widely framed shot with the Coca-Cola building on the horizon. Lucy’s hand was turned out, her wrists exposed.

Amanda asked Roz, “Do you have any more photos?”

The older woman smiled. One of her upper teeth was missing. “Look at the bloodlust. Who would’ve guessed it?”

Amanda made her request more specific. “Do you have any close-ups of her wrists?”

“No. Why?”

“Does that look like a scar to you? There, along her wrist?” She showed Evelyn the photo.

Evelyn squinted, then shook her head. “I can’t tell. What are you getting at?”

“Jane had scars on her wrist.”

“I remember.” Evelyn studied the photo more carefully. “If this is Lucy Bennett, why would she have scars on her wrists like Jane Delray?”

“Whoring’s not exactly something to live for.” Still, Roz opened one of her desk drawers and found a magnifying glass. Each woman took turns holding the glass to the picture.

Finally, Evelyn said, “I still can’t tell. It looks like a scar, but maybe it’s the light?”

“That’s my fault.” Roz sounded uncharacteristically apologetic. “My flash was acting up and Landry was pushing me to hurry so he could clock in to his other job.”

Amanda supplied, “Butch didn’t say anything in his notes about scars.”

“That idiot wouldn’t.” Contrary to her words, Roz Levy seemed delighted. “All right, Wag. Time to see what you’re really made of.”

Another wave of dread washed over Amanda. She felt as if she was on a roller coaster.

Evelyn said, “Roz, there’s no need to—”

“Shut your pie hole, blondie.” Roz cackled like a witch. “Pete’s cutting up your dead whore this afternoon. You hotshot lady dicks want, I can make a call and get you a ringside seat to the autopsy.”

Amanda knew some of the patrolmen used the morgue as their crack, or on-duty hiding place, especially during the summer. It was easier to sleep in an air-conditioned building, so long as you didn’t mind laying up next to a dead body.

She’d been to the Decatur Street building many times to pick up reports and drop off evidence, but she’d never before been into the back. Just the thought of what went on there gave Amanda the heebie-jeebies. Still, she kept her mouth closed as Evelyn led her deep inside the building, even though every step felt as if it was ratcheting down a clamp around her rib cage.

The two beers Amanda drank on the drive over were not helping matters. Instead of relaxed, she felt both lightheaded and extremely focused. It was a miracle she hadn’t driven her Plymouth up a telephone pole.

“Do you know Deena?” Evelyn asked, pushing open a swinging door. They were in a small lab. Two tables were shoved into opposite corners in the back of the room. There was a microscope on each. Various medical tools were laid out beside them. A large window took up the back wall. The hospital-green curtains were pulled back to show what must be the autopsy room. Yellow tile ran along the floor and up to the ceiling. There were two metal sinks. Two scales that seemed more appropriate for a grocer’s produce section.

And a body. A green drape covered the figure. A large light like a dentist used was overhead. One hand dropped down beside the table. The fingernails were bright red. The hand was turned inward. The wrist did not show.

Evelyn said, “I hate autopsies.”

“How many have you seen?”

“I don’t actually look at them,” she confessed. “You know how you can blur your eyes on purpose?”

Amanda nodded.

“That’s what I do. I just blur my eyes and say ‘mm’ and ‘yes’ when they ask questions or point out something interesting, and then I go to the bathroom afterward and throw up.”

That seemed like as good a plan as any. They heard footsteps in the hallway behind them.

Evelyn said, “Deena’s got a bad scar on her neck. Try not to stare.”

“A what?” Evelyn’s words got jumbled up in Amanda’s brain, so they didn’t make sense until a striking black woman came through the door. She was wearing a white lab coat over blue jeans and a flowing orange blouse. Her hair was in full Afro. Blue eye shadow adorned her eyelids. The skin around her neck was marred as if by a noose.

“Hey, Miss Lady,” Deena said, setting down a tray on one of the tables. There were slides laid out, splatters of white and red sandwiched between the glass. “What are you doing here?”

Evelyn said, “Roz called in a favor for me.”

“Why you still talkin’ to that nasty old Jew?” She smiled warmly at Amanda. “Who’s your pretty friend?”

Evelyn looped her arm through Amanda’s. “This is Amanda Wagner. She’s my partner now.”

The smile dropped. “Any relation to Duke?”

For the first time in her life, Amanda felt the compulsion to lie about her father. Maybe if they’d been alone, she would have, but she confessed, “Yes. I’m his daughter.”

“Hm.” She shot Evelyn a look and turned back around to her slides.

“She’s all right,” Evelyn said. “Come on, Dee. Do you think I’d bring someone here who’d—”

The woman spun back around. Her lip trembled with rage. “You know how I got this?” She pointed to the ugly scar on her neck. “Working at the cleaners down on Ponce, pressing Klan robes nice and stiff for people like your daddy.”

Evelyn tried, “That’s hardly her fault. You can’t blame her for her father’s—”

Deena held up a hand to stop her. “One day, my mama got her arm caught in one’a the machines. Ain’t no way to turn ’em off. Mr. Guntherson’s too cheap to pay for an electrician. I grab the cord and it swings back on my neck. Live wires. Boom, there’s an explosion—one’a them transformers gives out. Shut down the whole block for two days. Saved my life, but not my mama’s.”

Amanda didn’t know what to say. She’d been to that same dry cleaners many times, had never given a thought to the black women working in the back. “I’m sorry.”

Evelyn said, “She can’t control what her father does.”

Deena leaned back against the table. She crossed her arms. “You remember what I told you about my scar, Ev? I said I’d cover it up the day it don’t matter anymore.” She glared at Amanda. “It still matters.”

Evelyn stroked Amanda’s back. “This is my friend, Deena. We’re working a case together, trying to find some missing women.” Her words were rushed. “Kitty Treadwell. Someone named Mary. They might be connected to Lucy Bennett.”

“You check the dead nigger file?” She was talking to Amanda. “That’s what y’all call it, right? The DNF? Got one at every station house. Ain’t that right, Wag?”

Amanda was too embarrassed to look at her. She told Deena, “I think you probably know that I lost my mother, too.” What had happened to Miriam Wagner was common knowledge around the force. With enough whiskey in him, Duke relayed the story with a heady machismo. Amanda said, “You’re not the only one here with scars.”

Deena tapped her fingers on the table. The staccato started strong, then died down to nothing. “Look at me.”

Amanda forced herself to look up. It had been so easy with Roz, but with the old Jew, there had been a sense of righteousness. Now, there was only guilt.

Deena studied her for a bit longer. The anger that had burned so hotly in her eyes started to fade. Finally, she nodded. “All right,” she said. “All right.”

Evelyn slowly exhaled. She had a tight smile on her face. As usual, she tried to smooth things over. “Dee, did I tell you what Zeke did the other day?”

Deena turned back to the trays. “No, what’d he do?”

Amanda didn’t listen to the story. She stared back into the morgue. Her mind was still clouded from the beer, or maybe just the traumas of the day. She felt as if something was shifting inside of her. The last few days had called into question the previous twenty-five years of her life. Amanda wasn’t sure whether or not this was a good thing. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure about anything anymore.

“Hello-hello!” a man’s voice boomed from inside the morgue.

“That’s Pete,” Evelyn supplied.

The coroner was pudgy, with a ponytail and beard that looked days past washing—as did his tie-dyed T-shirt and faded, torn blue jeans. His white lab coat was tight through the sleeves. A cigarette dangled from his lip. He stood at the window, showing his yellow teeth. Amanda was not one to believe in vibes, but even with a thick piece of glass between them, she could almost feel the creepiness radiating off Pete Hanson’s body.

He said, “Deena, my love, you’re looking beautiful as ever this afternoon.”

Deena laughed even as she rolled her eyes. “Shut up, fool.”

“Only a fool for you, my dear.”

Evelyn supplied, “They do this all the time.”

“Oh.” Amanda tried to pretend she heard white men flirting with black women every day.

“Come on, Dee.” Pete tapped on the window. “You gonna let me buy you that drink?”

“Meet me outside at ten-after-never.” She snatched the drapes closed. “Y’all go on in.” She told Amanda, “When you throw up, aim for the floor drain. It’s easier to hose down that way.”

“Thank you,” Amanda managed.

She followed Evelyn into the autopsy room. The temperature was as cold as expected, but it was the odor that caught Amanda off guard. It was clean, like Clorox and Pine-Sol mixed with apples; nothing like what she expected.

There had been two calls during her uniform days wherein she was sent out to take a missing persons report and found that person not far from the house. One had been a man who’d been locked in his trunk. The other had been a child who’d gotten trapped inside an old refrigerator on the family’s shed porch. Each time, Amanda had taken one whiff and called for backup. She did not know what happened to the cases. She was at the station filling out reports by the time the bodies were removed.

“Who is this elegant lady?” Pete Hanson asked, his eyes on Amanda.

“This is—”

“Amanda Wagner,” Amanda told him. “I’m Duke Wagner’s daughter.”

He paused a beat. “So you are,” he finally said. “Duke’s quite a character, isn’t he?”

Amanda shrugged. She was bruised enough about her father for one day.

“Pete.” Evelyn put on her cheery voice again, but her fingers snaked into her hair, giving a telltale sign of her discomfort. “Thanks so much for letting us watch. We were in Lucy’s apartment last Monday. We never met her, but it was quite a shock to learn about the suicide.”

“Lucy?” Pete’s brow furrowed. “Where did you get that?”

“It was in Butch’s report,” Amanda supplied. “He ID’d her off her license.”

Pete walked over to a large, cluttered desk underneath the window. There were piles of papers stacked in a hodgepodge, but he somehow found the right one.

Smoke drifted from his cigarette as he read the preliminary report. The paper was thin. Amanda recognized Butch Bonnie’s scrawl reversed on the back where he’d turned the carbon paper the wrong way.

“Bonnie. Not the sharpest tack in the box, but at least it wasn’t that jackass Landry.” Pete put the report back on his desk. “In a case like this, the license ID is a last resort. I generally prefer dental records, fingerprints, or a family member coming in before I feel comfortable signing off on the identity.” He explained, “Learned my lesson in Nam. You don’t send someone home in a body bag unless you know the right family’s waiting on the other end.”

Amanda found relief in his words. For all his eccentricities, the man was at least good at his job.

“So.” Pete flicked ash off his cigarette. “What’s Kenny been up to? I haven’t seen him around.”

“This and that,” Evelyn said. She was watching Pete’s every move—the way he wiped his nose with a tissue from his pocket, the bobbing of his cigarette as he talked. Meanwhile, she pulled so hard at her hair that Amanda was certain she was going to yank some out. “He’s working with Bill on a shed at the house today.” She chewed her lip for a few seconds. “We’re having a barbecue later. You should come.”

Pete smiled at Amanda. “Will you be there?”

She got a sinking feeling. It was her lot in life to be attracted to the Kenny Mitchells of the world while the Pete Hansons were the only ones who ever bothered to ask her out. “Maybe,” she managed.

“Excellent.” He rolled over a metal tray. There were scalpels, scissors, a saw.

Evelyn stared at the instruments. Her face was pale. “You know, maybe I should give Bill a call. We dashed out without telling him when we’d be back.”

This wasn’t actually the truth. Evelyn had been clear that they weren’t sure what time they would return. Bill, unsurprisingly, had been very accommodating to his beautiful wife.

“I should go call,” Evelyn repeated. She practically ran out of the room.

Which left Amanda alone with Pete.

He was looking at her, but this time she saw the kindness in his eyes. “She’s a great lady, but this is one of the more challenging spectator sports.”

Amanda swallowed.

“Would you like me to take you through the process?”

“I—” She felt her throat tighten. “Why do you have to do an autopsy if it’s a suicide?”

Pete considered her question before walking across the room. There was a light box mounted on the wall. He flipped the toggle, and the lights flickered on. “The word ‘autopsy’ means, literally, ‘to see for oneself.’ ” He waved her over. “Come, my dear. Contrary to rumor, I don’t bite.”

Amanda tried to conceal her trepidation as she joined him. The X-ray showed a skull. The holes where the eyes and nose were supposed to go looked eerily empty.

“Do you see here?” he asked, pointing to the neck on the X-ray. Pieces of vertebrae flexed apart the way a cat’s paw opened when you pressed the pad. “This bone here is called the hyoid. That’s pronounced ‘hi-oid.’ It’s horseshoe shaped, and free-floats at the anterior midline between the chin and thyroid.” He showed on his own neck. “Here.”

Amanda nodded, though she wasn’t quite sure she grasped the point of his lecture.

“The wonderful thing about your neck is that you can move it up and down and side to side. The cartilage helps make that possible. The hyoid itself is fairly fascinating. It’s the only jointless bone in your entire body. Supports your tongue. Jiggles when you move it. Now, as I said, it’s right here—” He pointed to his neck again. “So, if someone is choked with a ligature, you’ll generally find bruising around the hyoid. But here”—he moved his fingers up—“is where you’ll find bruising if someone is hanged, above the hyoid. That’s a classic sign of hanging, actually. I’m sure you’ll see it more than once in your career.”

“You’re saying she tried to hang herself first?”

“No.” He pointed to the X-ray of the neck. “See this darker line here that bisects the hyoid?” Amanda nodded. “That indicates a fracture, which tells me she was choked, probably with great force.”

“Why great force?”

“Because she’s a young woman. Your hyoid starts out as two pieces. The bone doesn’t fully fuse until around the age of thirty. Feel for yourself.”

She thought he meant for her to touch his neck. Amanda desperately did not want to touch him. Still, she started to reach out.

Pete smiled, saying, “I believe you have your own neck.”

“Oh. Right.” Amanda laughed through her discomfort. She gently touched her fingers to her throat. She palpated the area, feeling things shift back and forth. The noise clicked in her ears.

Pete said, “You can feel there’s a lot of movement in there. So, you’d have to have significant pressure to fracture the hyoid.”

He motioned her to follow him over to the body. He stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray on the table. Without preamble, he pulled back the sheet, exposing Lucy Bennett’s head and shoulders. “See these bruises here?”

Amanda felt her eyes blur, but not on purpose. She blinked, focusing only on the neck. There were deep purple and red marks around the woman’s throat. They reminded her of Roz Levy. “She was choked.”

“Correct,” Pete agreed. “Her attacker wrapped his hands around her neck and strangled her. See the fingerprints here?”

Amanda leaned in for a closer look. Now that he’d put the thought into her head, she could see the individual strands of bruises that formed the fingers of a hand.

“Carotids,” Pete explained. “Arteries. One on each side of the neck. They deliver oxygenated blood to the brain. Very important. No oxygen, no brain.”

“Right.” Amanda remembered the lesson from her police academy days. They got to watch the men learn how to do choke holds one morning.

“Now.” Pete wrapped both his hands loosely around the woman’s neck. “See where my hands are?” Amanda nodded again. “See how pressing her carotid arteries in order to strangle her exerts enough force on the front of the neck to fracture the hyoid?” Again, she nodded. “Which tells me that this woman was strangled into unconsciousness.”

Amanda looked back at the X-ray. “The fall from the roof wouldn’t break the bone?”

“You’ll see when I open the neck that it’s highly improbable.”

Amanda could not suppress the shudder that came.

“You’re really doing quite well.”

Amanda ignored the compliment. “Could she live with a broken Hy …”

“Hyoid.”

“Right. Could she live with that?”

“Most certainly. A hyoid fracture or break isn’t necessarily fatal. I saw it often in Nam. The officers were trained in hand-to-hand combat, which of course they loved showing off. You hit a man here—” he chopped at his own neck—“with your elbow or even an open hand, and you can stun him or, with enough force, break the bone.” He cupped his hand to his chin like a tweedy college professor. “You feel a very distinctive sensation when you run your fingers along the neck, as if hundreds of bubbles are bursting under the skin. This comes from the air leaking out of the larynx into the tissue planes. In addition to the obvious panic, there’s tremendous pain, bleeding, bruising.” He smiled. “It’s a nasty little injury. Almost totally incapacitating. They’ll just lay there wheezing high up in their throats, praying for someone to help them.”

“Are they able to scream?”

“I’d be shocked if they could manage more than a hoarse whisper, but people surprise you sometimes. Everyone is different.”

Amanda tried to process all this new information. “But what you’re saying is that Lucy Bennett was choked.” She remembered Pete’s earlier terminology. “Strangled to death.”

He shook his head and shrugged at the same time. “I’ll need to see the lungs. Strangulation causes aspiration pneumonitis—the inhalation of vomit into the lungs. The gastric acids eat into the tissue. This gives us something of a timeline. The more tissue damage, the longer she was alive. Was she strangled into unconsciousness and then thrown off the roof or was she strangled to death and then thrown off the roof?”

“Why does it matter?” Either way, Lucy had been murdered.

“When you catch your perpetrator, you’re going to want to know the details of the crime. That way, you can make sure you’ve got the right guy and not some nut looking for a headline in the newspaper.”

Amanda didn’t see a scenario where she would be catching any perpetrator. She wasn’t even sure why Pete was answering her questions. “But why would the killer give details of the crime? That would just make the case against him stronger.”

“He won’t realize he’s walking into the trap you set.” Pete told her, “You are a lot smarter than he is. Your perpetrator is a man who cannot control himself.”

Amanda considered the statement, which didn’t strike her as wholly true. “He was smart enough to try to cover the crime.”

“Not as smart as you think. Throwing her off the roof was risky. It called attention to the crime. It opened up the possibility of witnesses. Why not leave her in the apartment and let a neighbor report the smell a few days—weeks—later?”

He was right. Amanda remembered the Manson murders, the way the bodies were posed. “Do you think the killer was sending a message?”

“Possibly,” Pete allowed. “We can also assume that he knew the victim fairly well.”

“Why do you say that?”

Pete gripped his hands around the top of the sheet. “Remember to breathe.” He pulled away the covering, exposing the rest of the body.

Amanda put her hand to her mouth. Nothing rushed up her throat. She didn’t pass out. She wasn’t even woozy. As with Roz Levy’s photos, she expected a violent reaction inside her body but was met instead with steely resolve. That same locking sensation from Techwood ran up Amanda’s spine. Her stomach actually stopped churning. Instead of fainting, she felt her vision sharpen.

Amanda had never seen another woman entirely nude before. There was something sad about the way her breasts hung to the side. Her stomach was saggy. Her pubic hair was short, as if it had been trimmed, but the hair on her thighs was grotesquely unshaven. Blood and viscera leaked between her legs. Her body had been pummeled. Bruises blackened her stomach and ribs.

Pete said, “In order to hurt somebody like this, you have to hate them. And hate does not come without familiarity. Just ask my ex-wife. She tried to strangle me once.”

Amanda glanced up at him. There was no suggestion behind his smile. He wasn’t just creepy, he was downright strange. And polite. Amanda could not recall the last conversation she’d had with a man where she wasn’t constantly interrupted or talked over.

Pete said, “You could be very good at this.”

Amanda didn’t know if that was much to write home about. It certainly wasn’t conversation for the dinner table. “Can you tell me anything about the nail polish?”

He took a latex glove out of his pocket. “Why don’t you tell me?”

Amanda didn’t want to, but she took the glove. She tried to shove her hand into the stiff latex.

“Wipe your palm first,” Pete advised.

Amanda wiped her sweaty hand on her skirt. The glove was still a tight fit, but once she managed to force her fingers into the tips, the rest of her hand easily followed.

Gently, she reached out for Lucy’s hand. The skin felt cold through the glove, or maybe Amanda was just imagining that. Instead of being limp, the body was stiff.

“Rigor mortis,” Pete explained. “The skeletal muscles contract, locking the joints. Onset varies depending on temperature and lesser factors. It starts in as little as ten minutes and lasts for up to seventy-two hours.”

“You can tell how long she’s been dead by how stiff she is.”

“Precisely,” he confirmed. “By the time I got to our victim yesterday afternoon, she had been dead approximately three to six hours.”

“That’s quite a window.”

“Science is not as precise as we’d like to believe.”

Amanda tried to turn the arm. It wouldn’t move.

“Don’t worry about being gentle. She can’t feel pain anymore.”

Amanda heard the sound of her throat working as she swallowed. She wrenched up the arm. There was a loud popping sound that sent a knife into Amanda’s chest.

“Breathe in and out,” Pete advised. “Remember, it’s just tissue and bone.”

Amanda swallowed again. The sound echoed in the room. She looked at Lucy Bennett’s fingers. “There’s something under her fingernails.”

“Very good catch.” He went over to the cabinet in the corner. “We can send it to the lab for analysis.”

Amanda wished she had Roz Levy’s magnifying glass. It wasn’t grime under the girl’s fingernails. “What do you think it is?”

“If she fought back, it’s probably skin scratched off her attacker. Let’s hope she managed to draw blood.” Pete was back with a glass slide and something that looked like an oversized toothpick. “Hold her steady.” Pete scraped the wooden pick under the fingernail. A long piece of skin came out. “If there’s enough blood in this skin tissue, and you find a suspect, we can analyze his blood and see if it’s the same type, whether he’s a secretor or nonsecretor.”

“We’d need more than blood to convict him.”

“The FBI is doing amazing work with enzymes right now.” He tapped the skin tissue onto the slide. “In ten years’ time, they’ll have samples from everyone in America stored on thousands of different computers all around the country. All you’ll have to do is send the sample around to each computer and bingo, within months you’ll know your perpetrator’s name and address.”

“You should tell that to Butch and Rick.” The two homicide detectives would probably laugh in his face. “This is their case.”

“Is it really?”

She didn’t bother answering the question. “I guess I don’t have to tell you how much trouble Evelyn and I would be in if they found out we were down here poking around.”

Pete put the slide on the counter. “You know, the GBI can’t find enough women to meet their quotas. They’re going to lose their federal grants if they don’t fill up the slots by the end of the year.”

“I work for the Atlanta Police Department.”

“You don’t have to.”

Pete obviously didn’t know Duke Wagner as well as everyone else she’d met today. Forget Butch and Rick. Her father would have a canary if he knew Amanda was at the morgue. Touching a dead person. Talking to a hippie about leaving her steady job to be the token woman on the state’s police force.

In for a penny, she supposed. There was still the reason they’d come here in the first place. Amanda turned the woman’s hand out, exposing the wrist to the light. There they were—the familiar white scars. “She tried to kill herself before.”

“Maybe,” Pete allowed. “A lot of young women cut themselves. Generally, it’s for attention. Your victim was obviously an addict. You can see that from the track marks. If she wanted to kill herself, she would’ve doubled down with the needle and her old friend H.”

Amanda realized, “You washed her.”

“Yes. We took photographs and X-rays, then we cut off her clothes and washed her down in preparation for the procedure. She’d urinated on herself—an unfortunate by-product of strangulation. Though one could point out this pales in comparison to the intestinal prolapse.” He added, “I should point out that she was remarkably clean considering her occupation and addiction.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was the expected results of the fall—picture a water balloon being dropped from that height—but in my experience, addicts don’t favor bathing. The natural oils clog the skin. They think it holds the drug in longer. I’m not sure if there’s a scientific basis for that, but someone who injects drain cleaner into their veins isn’t necessarily troubled by facts. You can see the trimming—” He indicated the short pubic hair. “That’s unusual, but I’ve seen it before. Some men are drawn to women who appear more infantilized.”

“Child molesters?”

“Not necessarily.”

Amanda nodded, though her eyes avoided the area Pete was talking about. Instead, she studied Lucy’s hands again. The fingernail polish was perfect except for the chip. The strokes were even. It had taken a lot of time and patience to apply such a thick coat. Even Amanda, who buffed and clear-coated her nails in front of the television every night, couldn’t manage such an expert job.

Pete asked, “Did you find something else?”

“Her fingernails.”

“Are they fake? I’ve been seeing a lot of those plastic ones out of California lately.”

“It looks like—” Amanda shook her head. She didn’t know what it looked like. The nails were trimmed in a straight line. The cuticles were neat. The red polish was evenly within the margins. She’d never met a woman who could afford a professional manicure. She doubted a dead prostitute would be the first.

Amanda walked around the table and looked at Lucy’s other hand. Again, the polish was perfect, as if someone else had applied it for her.

Amanda opened her mouth to speak, then stopped herself.

“Go on,” Pete said. “There are no silly questions in here.”

“Can you tell if she’s left- or right-handed?”

Pete beamed at Amanda as if she was his star pupil. “There will be more muscle attachment to the bone on the dominant side.”

“From holding a pen?”

“Among other things. Why are you asking?”

“When I paint my fingernails, one side always looks better than the other. With her, both sides look perfect.”

He smiled again. “This, my dear, is why more women should be in my field.”

Amanda doubted any sane woman would ever do this job—at least not one who ever wanted to get married. “Maybe she has a friend who painted her fingernails?”

“Do women really groom one another? I assumed Behind the Green Door was taking cinematic liberties.”

Amanda ignored the observation. She carefully put Lucy’s hand back down on the table. It was so easy to focus on the parts rather than the whole. She’d let herself forget that Lucy Bennett was an actual human being.

This was to be blamed in part because Amanda had not yet looked at the girl’s face. Amanda forced herself to do so now. She felt her early steeliness, but there was a tandem emotion of what could only be called curiosity. With the blood washed from Lucy’s face, she looked different. As in Roz’s photo, the skin still hung loosely to the side, but something beyond the obvious was not right.

“Could you …” Amanda didn’t want to sound morbid, but she pushed through it. “Can I see her teeth?”

“Most of them were broken in the fall. What are you getting at?”

“The skin on her face. Is it possible to move it back to—”

“Oh, of course.” Pete went to the head of the table. He gripped the loose flesh of the cheek and forehead and pulled it back over her skull. Lucy had bitten her lip in the fall. Pete returned it to the proper position. He used his fingers to tack the skin into place around the eyes and nose, like a baker kneading dough. “What do you think?”

Amanda realized it was exactly as she had expected. This woman was not Lucy Bennett. The scars on her wrist weren’t the only indication. The open sores on her feet had a familiar pattern, like a constellation of stars. Barring that, there was the face, which clearly belonged to Jane Delray. “I think we need to get Evelyn back in here.”

“How intriguing.”

Amanda left the room through the swinging doors. The lab was empty, so she pushed open the other set of doors leading into the hallway. Evelyn was several yards ahead, close to the entrance. She was talking with a man wearing a navy blue suit. He was tall, over six feet. His sandy brown hair touched his collar. The tailoring of his clothes was obviously professional. The jacket curved into his back. The flared pants hovered over his white loafers. He was finishing a cigarette when Amanda joined them. Evelyn shot her a look, her eyes practically bulging from their sockets.

She was talking to Mr. Blue Suit.

“Mr. Bennett.” Evelyn’s voice was pitched higher than usual, though she was doing a good job of hiding her excitement. “This is my partner, Miss Wagner.”

He barely glanced at her, keeping his eyes on his white loafers as he stamped out the cigarette. “As I said, I just want to see my sister and leave.”

“We had a few more questions,” she began, but Bennett cut her off.

“Is there a man I can talk to? Someone in charge?”

Amanda thought of Pete. “The coroner is in the back.”

Bennett’s lips twisted in distaste, whether at the thought of the coroner or what he saw in Amanda, she wasn’t sure. And it really didn’t matter. The only thing she could focus on was how arrogant and unlikable he was.

Amanda said, “Dr. Hanson is preparing the body. It’ll only be a few more minutes.”

Evelyn picked up the lie. “You won’t want to see her how she is now, Mr. Bennett.”

“I don’t want to see her period,” he snapped back. “As I told you, Mrs. Mitchell, my sister was a drug addict and a whore. What I’m doing here is a mere formality so that my mother can have some peace at the end of her life.”

“His mother has cancer,” Evelyn explained.

Amanda let a few seconds pass out of respect for the man’s mother, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Mr. Bennett, can you tell us when was the last time you saw your sister?”

He glanced away. “Five, maybe six years?” He looked down at his watch. It was a furtive movement, as obvious as Evelyn tugging the back of her hair. “I really do not appreciate your wasting my time. Shall I go back to the coroner?”

“Just another minute.” Amanda had never been good at spotting a liar, but Bennett was as easy to read as an open book. “Are you sure that’s the last contact you had with your sister?”

Bennett took a pack of Parliaments from his breast pocket and shook out a cigarette. A large gold college ring was on his middle finger. UGA Law School. Class of ’74. The Georgia Bulldog was etched into the red stone.

Amanda asked, “Mr. Bennett, are you sure about the timing? It seems like you’ve had contact with Lucy more recently.”

He showed a flash of guilt as he jammed the cigarette between his lips. “I mailed her a letter to the Union Mission. It was perfunctory, I assure you.”

“On Ponce de Leon?” Amanda asked. The Ponce Union Mission was the only homeless facility that allowed women.

Bennett said, “I tried to find Lucy when our father passed away. My mother had it in mind that she’d joined the hippie movement—you know, just dropped out for a while. She thought Lucy would want to come home, go to college, live a normal life. She could never accept that Lucy chose to be a whore.”

Evelyn asked, “When did your father pass?”

Bennett flicked his gold lighter, taking his time to light the cigarette. He didn’t speak again until he’d blown out a stream of smoke. “It was a few weeks after I graduated from law school.”

“Last year?”

“Yes. July or August. I can’t recall.” He inhaled deeply on the cigarette. “Lucy was never really a good girl. I suppose she fooled us all, right up until she ran off with some greaser to Atlanta. I’m sure you’ve heard this story more than a dozen times.” He exhaled, smoke curling from his nostrils. “She was always too willful. Stubborn.”

Amanda asked, “How did you know to mail the letter to the Union Mission?”

Bennett seemed irritated that she wouldn’t let him change the subject. “I made some calls to some people. They said that Lucy probably would’ve ended up there.”

Amanda wondered who these people were. She took a chance. “Are you a litigator, Mr. Bennett?”

“No, I do tax abatement. I’m a first-year associate at Treadwell-Price downtown. Why do you ask?”

So, Evelyn was right. He’d obviously gotten his boss to make a phone call. “Did you hear back from your sister?”

“No, but the man working there assured me that he gave the letter to Lucy. For whatever that’s worth.”

“Do you remember the man’s name?”

“Trask? Trent?” Bennett blew out a plume of smoke. “I don’t know. He was very unprofessional. Dirty clothes. Hair unkempt. Frankly, there was an odor about him. I imagine he’s a marijuana smoker.”

“You met him in person?”

“You can’t trust these people.” He sucked on the cigarette. “I thought I might find Lucy there. What I found was a bunch of disgusting whores and drunkards. Just the sort of place I knew Lucy would end up.”

“Did you see her?”

“Of course not. I doubt I would even recognize her.”

Amanda nodded, though this seemed like an odd statement coming from a man who was about to identify his dead sister’s body.

Evelyn asked, “Do you know a young woman named Kitty Treadwell?”

He narrowed his eyes. Smoke drifted from the tip of his cigarette. “What do you know about Kitty?” He didn’t let them answer. “You two ladies should mind where you stick your noses. They’re liable to get cut off.”

The front doors slammed open. Rick Landry and Butch Bonnie walked into the hallway. Both men scowled when they saw Amanda and Evelyn.

“Finally,” Bennett mumbled.

Landry was visibly furious. He stomped forward, demanding, “What the hell are you two slits doing here?”

Amanda was standing beside Evelyn. It didn’t take much to get in front of her, blocking Landry in the process. “We’re investigating our case.”

Landry didn’t bother responding to her statement. He turned, his shoulder bumping into Amanda’s so hard that she had to step back. “Hank Bennett?”

Bennett nodded. “Are you in charge?”

“Yes,” Landry said. “We are.” He crowded out Amanda, forcing her to step back again as he inserted himself between her and Bennett. “I’m sorry about your loss, sir.”

Bennett waved his hand, as if it was nothing. “I lost my sister a long time ago.” Again, he checked his watch. “Can we get this over with? I’m late for supper.”

Landry walked him down the hallway. Butch took up the rear. He glanced back at Amanda and Evelyn. He gave Amanda an unwelcome wink. She waited until they disappeared behind the door.

Evelyn hissed out air between her teeth. She put her hand to her chest. She was shaking.

“Come on.” Amanda grabbed Evelyn’s hand. The other woman was resistant. Amanda had to pull her down the hallway. She pushed ajar the door to the lab just as the three men were walking into the morgue.

Amanda waited until they were inside before opening the door. She kept her knees bent, as if she was sneaking around. The curtains on the large picture window were still drawn.

Evelyn whispered, “Amanda—”

“Shh,” Amanda shot back. Carefully, she parted the drapes a few inches. Evelyn joined her as they peered through the window.

Pete Hanson stood with his back to the far wall. His arms were crossed. He’d struck Amanda as a very easygoing fellow, but there was something in his posture that indicated he was very unhappy.

Landry and Butch had their backs to the window. Hank Bennett stood opposite, the dead girl between them. He was looking down at the victim’s face.

Apparently, Evelyn was, too. She whispered, “That’s Jane Delray,” at the same moment Hank Bennett said, “Yes, that’s my sister.”