A Faint Cold Fear

7

Sara sat in the main lobby of Grady Hospital, watching a steady stream of people coming and going through the large front entrance. The hospital had been built over a hundred years ago, and Atlanta had been adding on to it ever since. What started out as a small facility designed to service the city’s indigent population, with only a handful of rooms, now had nearly a thousand beds and trained over 25 percent of the doctors in Georgia.

Since Sara had worked here, several new sections had been built onto the main building, but not much had been done to blend the old with the new. The new lobby was huge, almost like the entrance of a suburban shopping mall. Marble and glass were everywhere, but most of the old hallways leading off it were lined with avocado green tiles and cracked yellow floors from the forties and fifties, so that stepping from one to the other was like stepping through time. Sara guessed that the hospital authority had probably run out of money before the refurbishment was complete.

There were no benches in the lobby, probably to discourage homeless people from hanging around, but Sara had been fortunate enough to grab a plastic chair someone had left near the doorway. From where she was sitting, she could watch people coming and going through the large glass doors, starting or ending their day. Even though the view was straight onto one of the parking decks for Georgia State University, the skyline was visible, dark clouds creeping along the rooftops like cats along a fence. People sat on the front steps smoking or talking to friends, killing time before their shift started or their bus came to take them home.

Sara glanced at her watch, wondering where Jeffrey was. He had told her to meet him here at four, and it was five past. She assumed he’d been caught in traffic—rush hour on the downtown connector tended to start around two-thirty and lasted until eight—but Sara was still anxious that he might not show. Jeffrey had a history of underestimating how long things would take. Sara was gripping her mother’s cell phone in her hands, thinking about calling Jeffrey, when the phone rang.

Sara answered, saying, “How late are you?”

“Late?” Hare gasped. “You told me you were on the Pill.”

Sara closed her eyes, thinking that the last thing she needed right now was her silly cousin. She loved him to death, but Hare had a pathological inability to take anything seriously.

She asked, “Did you talk to Mama?”

“Ayup,” he answered, but did not elaborate.

“How are things going at the clinic?”

“All that crying,” he groaned. “I don’t know how you stand it.”

“It takes a while to get used to,” Sara told him, feeling sympathetic. She still cringed when she thought of the time a six-year-old ran screaming from her in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly because he recognized her as the woman who gave shots.

“The whining,” Hare continued. “The complaining.” He pitched his voice into a pointed falsetto. “ ‘Put the charts back where they belong! Stop drawing doodles on the prescription pads! Tuck in your shirt! Does your mother know about that tattoo?’ Good God a’mighty, that Nelly Morgan is a hard woman.”

Sara found herself smiling as he made fun of the clinic’s office manager. Nelly had been in charge of the clinic for years, even as far back as when Sara and Hare were patients there.

“Anyhooooo,” Hare drew out the word. “I hear you’re coming back tonight?”

“Yeah,” Sara told him, dreading where this might lead. She decided to make things easy for him. “I know you’re supposed to be on vacation. I can work tomorrow if you want to take off.”

“Oh, Carrot, don’t be ridiculous,” he scoffed. “I would much rather you owe me for this.”

“I do,” she told him, stopping just short of thanking him; not because she wasn’t grateful but because Hare would find some way to turn her words into a joke.

He said, “I guess you’re working on Greg Louganis tonight?”

Sara had to think about his question for a second before she understood what he was asking. Greg Louganis was a gold-medal-winning Olympic diver.

“Yes,” she said, and then, because Hare worked at the emergency room in Grant, she asked, “Did you know Andy Rosen?”

“Thought you might put three and three together,” he said. “He came in around New Year’s with a banana split on his arm.”

Working in the ER, Hare had slang for every condition known to man. “And?”

“And not much. The radial artery snapped up like a rubber band.”

Sara had wondered about this. Slicing your arm straight up was not the smartest way to kill yourself. If the radial artery was cut, it tended to close itself off quickly. There were easier ways to bleed to death.

She asked, “Do you think it was a serious attempt?”

“A serious attempt to get attention,” Hare said. “Mommy and Daddy were freaked out. Our golden boy basked in the rays of their love, playing the brave trouper.”

“Did you call a psych consult?”

“His mother’s a shrinky-dink,” Hare told her. “She said she would take care of it her own damn self.”

“She was rude about it?”

“Of course not!” he countered. “She was very polite. I just thought I’d editorialize to make it seem more dramatic.”

“Was it dramatic?”

“Oh, it was for the parents. But if you ask me, their little love was calm as a cucumber.”

“You think he did it to get attention?”

“I think he did it to get a car.” He made a popping sound with his mouth. “And what do you know, a week later I was walking the dog downtown and there goes Andy, driving a shiny new Mustang.”

Sara put her hand to her eyes, trying to make her brain synapse. She asked, “Were you surprised when you heard he killed himself?”

“Very,” Hare told her. “That boy was too self-centered to kill himself.” He cleared his throat. “This is all entre nous, you understand. That’s French for—”

“I know what it means,” Sara interrupted, not wanting to hear Hare’s made-up definition. “Let me know if you think of anything else.”

“All right,” he said, sounding disappointed.

“Is there anything else?”

He blew air through his lips, making a sputtering sound. “About your malpractice insurance . . .”

He gave Sara enough time to feel like she was having a small heart attack. She knew he was winding her up, but like every other doctor in America, Sara’s malpractice premiums were higher than the national debt.

She finally prompted, “Yes?”

“Does it cover me, too?” Hare asked. “Because if I make one more claim on mine, they’re gonna ask for the free steak knives back.”

Sara glanced at the front doors. To her surprise, Mason James was walking toward her holding the hand of a two- or three-year-old boy.

She told Hare, “I’ve got to go.”

“You always do.”

“Hare,” Sara said as Mason grew closer. She noticed for the first time that he walked with a pronounced limp.

“Yee-es?” Hare asked.

“Listen,” Sara began, knowing she would regret her words. “Thank you for covering for me.”

“I always have,” he said, chuckling as he hung up the phone.

Mason greeted her, a warm smile lighting up his face. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

“It was just Hare,” she said, ending the call. “My cousin.” She started to stand, but he indicated she should stay seated.

“I know you’re tired,” he told her, swinging the little boy’s hand. “This is Ned.”

Sara smiled at the child, thinking he looked very much like his father. “How old are you, Ned?”

Ned held up two of his fingers, and Mason leaned down to peel up another one.

“Three,” Sara said. “You’re a big boy for three.”

“He’s a sleepy boy,” Mason said, ruffling his hair. “How’s your sister doing?”

“Better,” she told him, feeling for a split second like she might cry. Other than the few words she had said to Sara, Tessa was not talking to anyone. She had spent most of her time awake staring blankly at the wall.

Sara told Mason, “She’s still in a lot of pain, but her recovery looks good.”

“That’s great.”

Ned walked to Sara, holding out his arms. Children were often drawn to Sara, which came in handy considering that more times than not she was poking and prodding them. She tucked the cell phone into her back pocket and picked him up.

Mason commented, “He knows a beautiful woman when he sees one.”

She smiled, ignoring the compliment as she shifted Ned on her lap. “When did you get the limp?”

“Kid bite,” he told her, laughing at her reaction. “Doctors Without Borders.”

“Wow,” Sara said, impressed.

“We were vaccinating kids in Angola, if you can believe it. This little girl took a chunk out of my leg.” He knelt in front of her to tie Ned’s shoe. “Two days later they were talking about whether or not they were going to have to chop off my leg to stop the infection.” He got a wistful look in his eyes. “I always thought you’d end up doing something like that.”

“Chopping off your leg?” she asked, though she knew what he meant. “Rural areas are underserved,” she reminded him. “My patients depend on me.”

“They’re lucky to have you.”

“Thank you,” she said. This was the sort of compliment Sara could take.

“I can’t believe you’re an ME.”

“Daddy finally stopped calling me Quincy after the third year.”

He shook his head, laughing. “I can imagine.”

Ned started to fidget in Sara’s lap, and she jiggled him on her knee. “I like the science. I like the challenge.”

Mason glanced around the lobby. “You could be challenged here.” He paused for a moment. “You’re a brilliant physician, Sara. You should be a surgeon.”

She laughed uncomfortably. “You make it sound like I’m wasting away.”

“I don’t mean that at all,” he said. “I just think it’s a shame you moved back there.” As an afterthought, he added, “No matter the reasons why.” He took her hand on this last note, squeezing it gently.

Sara returned the squeeze, asking, “How’s your wife?”

He laughed, but did not let go of her hand. “Enjoying having the house to herself now that I’m living at the Holiday Inn.”

“You’re separated?”

“Six months now,” he told her. “Makes being in practice with her a bit tricky.”

Sara was conscious of Ned in her lap. Children understood a lot more than adults gave them credit for. “Does it look final?”

Mason smiled again, but she could tell it was forced. “Afraid so.”

“How about you?” he asked, a wistful tone in his voice. Mason had tried to see Sara after she left Grady, but it had not worked out. She had wanted to cut her ties with Atlanta to make it easier to live in Grant. Seeing Mason would have made that impossible.

She tried to think of a way to answer Mason’s question, but her relationship with Jeffrey was so ill defined it was hard for her to describe. She looked toward the doors, sensing Jeffrey before she could see him. Sara stood, using both hands to shift Ned onto her shoulder.

Jeffrey was not smiling when he reached them. He looked as exhausted as she felt, and Sara thought there was a little more gray in the dark hair around his temples.

“Hi,” Mason said, holding out his hand to Jeffrey.

Jeffrey took it, giving Sara a sideways glance.

“Jeffrey,” she said, shifting Ned, “this is Mason James, a colleague of mine from when I worked here.” Without thinking, she said to Mason, “This is Jeffrey Tolliver, my husband.”

Mason seemed as shocked as Jeffrey, but neither of them could hold a candle to Sara.

“Nice to meet you,” Jeffrey said, not bothering to correct the gaffe. He had such a shit-eating grin on his face that Sara felt tempted to do it herself.

Jeffrey indicated the child. “Who’s this?”

“Ned,” Sara told him, surprised when Jeffrey reached out and chucked Ned under the chin.

“Hello, Ned,” Jeffrey said, bending down to look at him.

Sara was taken aback by Jeffrey’s openness with the boy. They had talked early on in their relationship about the fact that Sara could not have children, and she often wondered if Jeffrey restrained himself around kids on purpose, trying not to hurt her feelings. He certainly was not holding back now, as he made a funny face, causing Ned to laugh.

“Well,” Mason said, reaching out for Ned, “I’d better get this one home before he turns into a pumpkin.”

Sara said, “It was nice seeing you.” There was a long, awkward silence, and Sara looked from one man to the other. Her tastes had changed considerably since she had dated Mason, who had light blond hair and a solid build from working out in the gym. Jeffrey had a lean runner’s body, and dark good looks that made him sexy in a dangerous sort of way.

“I wanted to say,” Mason began, digging around in his pocket, “I had a key made for my office. It’s 1242 on the south wing.” He took out the key, offering it to Sara. “I thought you and your family might want to rest there. I know it’s hard to find a private place in the hospital.”

“Oh,” Sara said, not taking the key. Jeffrey had noticeably stiffened. “I couldn’t impose.”

“It’s no imposition. Really.” He pressed the key into her hand, letting his fingers linger against her palm longer than necessary. “My main office is at Emory. I just keep a desk and a couch here to shuffle paperwork.”

“Thank you,” Sara said, because there was nothing else she could do. She dropped the key into her pocket as Mason held out his hand again to Jeffrey.

Mason said, “Nice meeting you, Jeffrey.”

Jeffrey shook Mason’s hand, his reserve somewhat diminished. He waited patiently while Sara and Mason said good-bye, his eyes following their every movement. When Mason had finally left, he said, “Nice guy,” the same way he might say, “Asshole.”

“Yeah,” Sara agreed, walking toward the front doors. She could sense something coming and did not want it to play out in the lobby of the hospital.

“Mason.” He said the name like it brought a bad taste to his mouth. “That the guy you dated when you worked here?”

“Hm,” she answered, opening the door for an older couple who were going into the hospital. She told Jeffrey, “A long time ago.”

“Yeah,” he said, tucking his hands into his pockets. “He seems like a nice guy.”

“He is,” Sara allowed. “Are you in the parking deck?”

He nodded. “Nice-looking.”

She walked out the door, saying, “Uh-hm.”

“You sleep with him?”

Sara was too shocked to answer. She started to cross the street toward the parking deck, willing him to drop it.

He jogged to catch up with her. “Because I don’t remember you naming names when we swapped lists.”

She laughed, incredulous. “Because you couldn’t remember half of yours, Slick.”

He gave her a nasty look. “That isn’t funny.”

“Oh, for God’s sakes,” she groaned, incapable of believing he was being serious. “You sowed enough wild oats before we were married to qualify for farm subsidies.”

A group of people milled around the entrance of the parking-deck stairwell, and Jeffrey pushed through them without a word. He opened the door, not bothering to see if Sara caught it before it closed.

“He’s married,” she told him, her voice echoing in the concrete stairwell.

“So was I,” he pointed out, something she did not think said much in his favor.

Jeffrey stopped on the first landing, waiting for her to catch up. “I dunno, Sara, I came a long way to get up here and see you holding some other guy’s hand with his kid in your lap.”

“You’re jealous?” Sara could barely manage the question around a shocked laugh. She had never known Jeffrey to be jealous of anyone, mostly because he was too egotistical to consider the idea that any woman he wanted could possibly want someone else.

He demanded, “You wanna explain this to me?”

“No, frankly,” she told him, thinking that any moment now he would say he was teasing her.

Jeffrey continued up the stairs. “If that’s the way you want to play it.”

Sara climbed after him. “I don’t owe you an explanation for anything.”

“You know what?” he said, continuing up the stairs. “Blow me.”

Anger rooted Sara to the concrete. “You’ve got your head so far up your ass you can just reach around and do it yourself.”

He stood above her, looking as if she’d deceived him and he was feeling foolish. Sara could see that he was deeply hurt, which took away some of her irritation.

Sara resumed the climb toward him. “Jeff . . .”

He said nothing.

“We’re both tired,” she said, stopping on the tread just below him.

He turned, walking up the next flight, saying, “I’m back home cleaning your kitchen, and you’re up here—”

“I never asked you to clean my kitchen.”

He stopped on the landing, leaning his hands on the railing in front of one of the large glass windows that overlooked the street. Sara knew she could either stand on her principles and spend the four-hour drive back to Grant in terse silence or make the effort to soothe his hurt ego so the trip would be bearable.

She was about to give in when Jeffrey inhaled deeply, his shoulders rising. He let the breath go slowly, and she could see him calming down.

He asked, “How’s Tessie?”

“Better,” she told him, leaning against the stair railing. “She’s getting better.”

“What about your folks?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, and the truth was, she did not want to consider the question. Cathy seemed better, but her father was so angry that every time Sara looked at him, she felt like she was choking on guilt.

Footsteps announced the presence of at least two people above them. They both waited as two nurses came down the stairs, neither of them doing a good job of hiding their snickers.

When they had passed, Sara said, “We’re all tired. And scared.”

Jeffrey stared at the front entrance of Grady, which loomed over the parking deck like the BatCave. He said, “This has to be hard for them, being up here.”

She shrugged this off, climbing the last stairs to reach the landing. “How did it go with Brock?”

“Okay, I guess.” His shoulders relaxed more. “Brock is so freaking weird.”

Sara started up the next flight of stairs. “You should meet his brother.”

“Yeah, he told me about him.” He caught up with her on the next landing. “Is Roger still in town?”

“He moved to New York. I think he’s some kind of agent now.”

Jeffrey gave an exaggerated shudder, and she could tell he was making an effort to get past the argument.

“Brock’s not that bad,” Sara told him, feeling the need to take up for the mortician. Dan had been mercilessly teased when they were growing up, something Sara could not abide even as a child. At the clinic she saw two or three kids a month who were not sick so much as tired of the relentless teasing they got at school.

“I’ll be interested to see how the tox screen comes back,” Jeffrey said. “Rosen’s father seems to think he was clean. His mother’s not so sure.”

She raised an eyebrow. Parents tended to be the last to know when their kids were using drugs.

“Yeah,” he said, acknowledging her skepticism. “I’m not sure about Brian Keller.”

“Keller?” Sara asked, crossing yet another landing and heading up another flight of stairs.

“He’s the father. The son took the mother’s last name.”

Sara stopped climbing, more to catch her breath than anything else. “Where the hell did you park?”

“Top floor,” he said. “One more flight.”

Sara grabbed the railing, pulling herself up the stairs. “What’s wrong with the father?”

“There’s something going on with him,” he said. “This morning, he acted like he wanted to talk to me, but his wife came back into the room and he shut up.”

“Are you going to interview him again?”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Frank’s going to do some digging around.”

“Frank?” Sara asked, surprised. “Why don’t you get Lena? She’s in a better position to—”

He cut her off. “She’s not a cop.”

Sara kept her mouth shut the last few steps, nearly collapsing with relief when he opened the door at the top of the stairs. Even this late in the day, the upper deck was packed with cars of all makes and models. Overhead, a storm was brewing, the sky turning an ominous black. Security lights flickered on as they walked toward Jeffrey’s unmarked police car.

A group of young men was hanging around a large black Mercedes, their heavily muscled arms crossed over their chests. As Jeffrey walked by, the men exchanged looks, pegging him for a cop. Sara felt her heartbeat accelerate as she waited for Jeffrey to unlock the door, inexplicably scared that something horrible would happen.

Once inside the car, she felt safe cocooned in the plush blue interior. She watched Jeffrey walk around the front to get in, his eyes locked on the group of thugs by the Mercedes. All this posturing had a point, Sara knew. If the boys thought Jeffrey was scared, they would do something to harass him. If Jeffrey thought they were vulnerable, he would probably feel compelled to force something.

“Seat belt,” Jeffrey reminded Sara, closing his door. She did as she was told, clicking the belt across her lap.

Sara was quiet as they drove out of the parking deck. On the street she leaned her head on her hand, watching downtown go by, thinking how different everything was since she had last been here. The buildings were taller, and the cars in the next lane seemed to be driving too close. Sara was no longer a city person. She wanted to be back in her small town where everyone knew one another—or at least thought they did.

Jeffrey said, “I’m sorry I was late.”

“It’s okay,” she said.

“Ellen Schaffer,” he began. “The witness from yesterday.”

“Did she say something?”

“No,” Jeffrey said, then paused before finishing, “She killed herself this morning.”

“What?” Sara demanded. Then, before he could answer, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m telling you now.”

“You should have called me.”

“What could you have done?”

“Come back to Grant.”

“You’re doing that now.”

Sara tried to quell her irritation. She did not like being protected like this. “Who pronounced the death?”

“Hare.”

“Hare?” Sara said, some of her irritation rubbing off on her cousin for not telling her this on the phone. “Did he find anything? What did he say?”

Jeffrey put his finger to his chin and affected Hare’s voice, which was a few octaves higher than Jeffrey’s. “ ‘Don’t tell me, something’s missing.’ ”

“What was missing?”

“Her head.”

Sara let out a long groan. She hated head wounds. “Are you sure it’s a suicide?”

“That’s what we need to find out. There was a discrepancy with the ammo.”

Sara listened as he filled her in on what had happened this morning, from his interview with Andy Rosen’s parents to finding Ellen Schaffer. She stopped him at the arrow Matt had found traced into the dirt outside Schaffer’s window. “That’s what I did,” she told him. “To mark the trail when I was looking for Tessa.”

“I know,” he said, but offered nothing more.

“Is that why you didn’t want to tell me?” Sara asked. “I don’t like you withholding information from me. It’s not your decision—”

With sudden vehemence he said, “I want you to be careful, Sara. I don’t want you going on that school campus alone. I don’t want you around any of the crime scenes. Do you understand me?”

She did not answer, mostly out of shock.

“And you’re not staying at your house alone.”

Sara could not stop herself. “Hold on—”

“I’ll sleep on your couch if that’s what it takes,” he interrupted. “This is not about getting you to spend the night with me. This is about me not needing another person to worry about right now.”

“Do you think you need to be worried about me?”

“Did you think you needed to be worried about Tessa?”

“That’s not the same.”

“That arrow could mean something. It could be pointing back toward you.”

“People draw marks in the dirt with their shoe all the time.”

“You think it’s just a coincidence? Ellen Schaffer’s head is blown off—”

“Unless she did it herself.”

“Don’t interrupt me,” he warned, and she would have laughed if his words were not tempered with his obvious concern for her safety. “I’m telling you, I’m not going to leave you alone.”

“We’re not even sure if this is murder, Jeffrey. Except for a few things that are out of place—and those could be explained away easily enough—this could prove to be a suicide.”

“So you think Andy killed himself and Tess was stabbed and this girl today killed herself and they’re all unrelated?”

Sara knew it was not likely but still said, “It’s possible.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, “a lot of things are possible, but you’re not staying alone in town tonight. Is that understood?”

Sara could only offer her silence as acquiescence.

He said, “I don’t know what else to do, Sara. I can’t worry about you like that. I can’t feel like you’re in jeopardy. I won’t be able to function.”

“It’s okay,” she finally said, trying to sound as though she understood. Sara realized that what she’d been looking forward to most was being in her own house, sleeping in her own bed, alone.

Jeffrey told her, “If it’s all unconnected, you can call me an asshole later.”

“You’re not being an asshole,” Sara said, because she knew that his concern was real. “Tell me why you were late. Did you find out anything?”

Jeffrey said, “I stopped at the tattoo parlor on the way out of town and talked to the owner.”

“Hal?”

Jeffrey gave her a sideways glance as he merged onto the interstate. “How do you know Hal?”

“He was a patient of mine a long time ago,” Sara said, stifling a yawn. Then, just to prove that Jeffrey did not know everything about her, she added, “Tessa and I were going to get tattoos a few years back.”

“A tattoo?” Jeffrey was skeptical. “You were going to get a tattoo?”

She gave what she hoped was a sly smile.

“Why didn’t you?”

Sara turned in her seat so she could look at him. “You can’t get them wet for a while. We were going to the beach the next day.”

“What were you going to get?”

“Oh, I don’t remember,” she told him, though she did.

“Where were you going to get it?”

She shrugged.

“Right,” he said, still disbelieving.

“What did he say?” Sara asked. “Hal?”

Jeffrey held her gaze a few beats before answering. “That he doesn’t do tattoos on kids under twenty-two unless he talks to their parents first.”

“That’s smart,” Sara said, thinking Hal must have done this to stop the flood of angry phone calls from parents who sent their kids to school for an education, not a permanent tattoo.

Sara suppressed another yawn. The motion of the car could easily lull her to sleep.

“There could still be a connection,” Jeffrey said, but he did not sound hopeful. “Andy has the piercing. Schaffer has a tattoo. They could’ve gotten it done together. There are three thousand tattoo parlors between here and Savannah.”

“What did his parents say?”

“It was kind of hard to ask directly. They didn’t seem to know anything about it.”

“That’s not the thing a kid would normally ask permission for.”

“I guess not,” he agreed. “If Andy Rosen were still alive, he would be my number-one suspect for Schaffer. The kid was obviously obsessed with her.” His face took on a sour expression. “I hope to God you never have to see that drawing.”

“Are you sure they didn’t know each other?”

“Her friends are positive,” Jeffrey said. “According to everyone at the dorm, Schaffer was used to guys having unrequited crushes on her. Happened all the time, and she never even noticed them. I talked to the art teacher. Even he noticed it. Andy mooned over Ellen, and she had no idea who he was.”

“She was an attractive girl.” Sara could not remember much prior to Tessa’s stabbing, but Ellen Schaffer was beautiful enough to leave an impression.

“Could be a jealous rival,” Jeffrey said, though he did not have much conviction in his tone. “Maybe some kid had a crush on Schaffer and took out Andy?” He paused, working through the theory. “Then, when Schaffer didn’t come running to the would-be suitor, he killed her, too?”

“It’s possible,” Sara said, wondering how Tessa’s attack would fit in.

“Schaffer could have seen something,” Jeffrey continued. “Maybe she saw something in the woods, someone there.”

“Or maybe whoever was waiting in the woods thought she saw something.”

“Do you think Tessa will ever remember what happened?”

“Amnesia is common with that sort of head wound. I doubt she’ll ever really remember, and even if she does, it wouldn’t hold up under cross-examination.” Sara did not add that she hoped her sister would never remember. The memory of Tessa’s losing her child was hard enough for Sara. She could not imagine what it would be like for Tessa to live with those events constantly in her mind.

Sara changed the subject back to Ellen Schaffer. “Did anyone see anything?”

“The whole house was out.”

“No one stayed home sick?” Sara asked, thinking that fifty college girls all going to class like they were supposed to was rare enough to make the papers.

“We canvassed the whole house,” Jeffrey told her. “Everybody was accounted for.”

“Which house?”

“Keyes.”

“The smart kids,” Sara said, knowing this would explain why they were all in class. “No one on campus heard the shot?”

“Some people came forward and said they heard what sounded like a car backfiring.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “She used a twelve-gauge pump-action.”

“Good God,” Sara said, knowing what the result of that would look like.

Jeffrey reached around to the backseat and pulled a file out of his briefcase.

“Close range,” he said, taking a color photo out of the file. “The rifle was probably in her mouth. Her head could’ve muffled the sound like a silencer.”

Sara turned on the map light to look at the photograph. It was worse than she had imagined.

“Jesus,” she mumbled. The autopsy was going to be difficult. She glanced at the clock on the radio. They would not reach Grant until eight, depending on traffic. The two autopsies would take at least three to four hours each. Sara said a silent thank-you to Hare for offering to fill in for her tomorrow. The way things looked, she would need the entire day to sleep.

“Sara?” Jeffrey asked.

“Sorry,” she said, taking the file from him. She opened it but her eyes blurred on the words. She concentrated on the pictures instead, flipping past the photo of the arrow drawn into the dirt to find the ones of the crime scene.

“Someone could’ve sneaked in through the window,” Jeffrey continued. “Maybe he was there already, hiding in the closet or something. She goes to the bathroom down the hall and comes back to her room and—boom. There he is, waiting.”

“Did you find prints?”

“He could have worn gloves,” Jeffrey said, not exactly answering her question.

“Women don’t usually shoot themselves in the face,” Sara conceded, looking at a close-up of Ellen Schaffer’s desk. “That’s more something a man would do.” Sara had always thought the statistic sounded sexist, but the numbers proved it out.

“There’s something wrong with this.” Jeffrey indicated the photograph. “Not just because of the arrow. Let’s take that out of it, take out Tessa. The shooting still doesn’t look right.”

“Why?”

“I wish I could tell you. It’s just like with Rosen. There’s nothing I can put my finger on.”

Sara thought of Tessa lying in bed back at the hospital. She could still hear her sister’s words, ordering Sara to find the person who had done this to all of them. The photograph of Schaffer’s room brought back a memory for Sara. She had driven to Vassar with Tessa to help her get settled in. Tessa’s dorm room had been decorated the same way as Ellen Schaffer’s. Posters for the World Wildlife Federation and Greenpeace were tacked to the walls along with pictures of men torn from various magazines. A calendar hanging over one of the desks had important dates circled in red. The only thing that did not jibe was the array of gun-cleaning tools on the desk.

Sara flipped back to the report. She knew that reading without her glasses would give her a headache, but she wanted to feel like she was accomplishing something. By the time she had finished reviewing all the information Jeffrey had compiled on Ellen Schaffer’s death, Sara’s head was pounding and her stomach was upset from reading in a moving car.

Jeffrey asked, “What do you think?”

“I think . . . ,” Sara began, looking down at the closed file. “I think I don’t know. Both deaths could be staged. I suppose Schaffer could have been taken by surprise. Maybe she was hit on the back of the head. Not that we know where the back of her head is.”

Sara pulled out several of the photographs, putting them in some kind of order, saying, “She’s lying on the couch. She could have been placed there. She could’ve lain down on her own. Her arm isn’t long enough to reach the trigger, so she used her toe. That’s not uncommon. Sometimes people use clothes hangers.” She glanced back over the report, rereading Jeffrey’s notes on the ammo discrepancy. “Would she have known how dangerous it is to use the wrong ammunition?”

“I talked to her instructor. According to him, she was very careful with the gun.” Jeffrey paused. “What’s Grant Tech doing with a women’s rifle team in the first place?”

“Title Nine,” Sara told him, referring to the legislation that forced universities to give women the same access to sports that men had. If the policy had been around when Sara was in high school, the women’s tennis team would at least have gotten time on the school court. As it was, they had been forced to hit balls against the wall in the gymnasium—but only when the boys’ basketball team wasn’t practicing.

Sara said, “I think it’s great they have a chance to learn a new sport.”

Surprisingly, Jeffrey conceded, “The team’s pretty good. They’ve won all kinds of competitions.”

“So people at school who knew she was on the team would know she had a rifle.”

“Maybe.”

“She kept the gun in her room?”

“Both of them did,” Jeffrey told her. “Her roommate was on the team, too.”

Sara thought of the gun. “Did you take her prints yet?”

“Carlos took them,” he told her, then anticipated her next question. “Schaffer’s fingerprints are on the barrel, the pump, and what’s left of the shell.”

“One shell?” Sara asked. As far as she knew, a pump-action rifle carried a three-shell magazine. Pumping the fore end would put another shell in the chamber for rapid fire.

“Yeah,” Jeffrey told her. “One shell, the wrong caliber for the gun, the skeet choke screwed on so the barrel would be tighter.”

“Does her toe match the print on the trigger?”

Jeffrey admitted, “I didn’t even think to check.”

“We’ll do it before the autopsy,” Sara told him. “Do you think someone forced her to load the rifle, maybe someone who didn’t know much about guns?”

“The first shell has a good chance of jamming in the barrel. If she didn’t have another shell in the magazine, then she could buy herself some time. Maybe even turn the gun around and use it to hit the guy.”

“Wouldn’t the shell explode in the barrel?”

“Not necessarily. If she had a full magazine, the second shell would hit the first and they would both explode near the chamber.”

Sara said, “Maybe that’s why she only loaded one.”

“She was either really smart or really stupid.”

Sara kept staring at the pictures. A lot of her cases were suicides, and this looked just like any other. If Andy Rosen had not died the day before, and Tessa had not been hurt, Sara and Jeffrey would not be asking these questions. Even the scrape on Andy’s back would not have been enough to warrant opening a full investigation.

Sara asked, “What connects them all?”

“I don’t know,” Jeffrey said. “Tessa’s the wild card. Schaffer and Rosen have the art class, but that’s—”

“Is that Jewish?” Sara interrupted. “Schaffer, I mean.”

“Rosen is,” Jeffrey said. “I’m not sure about Schaffer.”

Sara felt anxiety take hold as she worked out a possible connection. “Andy Rosen is Jewish. Ellen Schaffer might be. Tessa is dating a black man. Not just dating him, but having his child.”

“What are you saying?” Jeffrey said, though she knew he was following her.

“Either Andy was pushed or he jumped from a bridge that had racist graffiti spray-painted on it.”

Jeffrey stared straight ahead at the road, not speaking for at least a full minute. “Do you think that’s the connection?”

“I don’t know,” Sara answered. “There was a swastika on the bridge.”

“Beside, ‘Die Nigger,’ “ Jeffrey pointed out. “Not Jews.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “If it was meant to be something against Andy because he was Jewish, then it would have been more specific. It would have said ‘Die Jews.’ ”

“What about the Star of David you found in the woods?”

“Maybe Andy walked through the woods and dropped it before he killed himself. We don’t have anything that links it to Tessa’s attacker.” He paused. “Still, Rosen and Schaffer are Jewish names. That could be a connection.”

“There are a lot of Jewish kids on campus.”

“That’s true.”

“Do you think this graffiti means there’s some kind of white-supremacist group working here?”

“Who else would spray-paint that kind of shit around school?”

Sara tried to see the holes in her theory. “The bridge wasn’t painted recently.”

“I can ask around, but, no, it looks a couple of weeks old at least.”

“So what we’re saying is that two weeks ago somebody painted the swastika and the slur on the bridge, knowing that yesterday he would push Andy Rosen over the side and then I would come along and bring Tessa, who would need to urinate and get stabbed in the forest?”

“It was your theory,” Jeffrey reminded her.

“I didn’t say it was a good one,” Sara admitted. She rubbed her eyes, saying, “I can barely see straight I’m so tired.”

“Do you want to try to sleep?”

She did, but Sara could only think of Tessa, and how the only thing she had asked her to do was find the man who had done this to her. She said, “Let’s drop the racist angle. Let’s say these were staged to look like a suicide. Do you think it’s best to hide the fact that two kids have been murdered?”

“Honestly?” Jeffrey asked. “I don’t know. I don’t want to give the parents false hope, and I don’t want to cause some sort of panic on the campus. And if these are murders, which we’re not even sure they are, then maybe the guy will get cocky and make some mistakes.”

Sara knew what he meant. Despite popular belief, killers seldom wanted to get caught. Murder was the ultimate exercise in risk taking, and the more they got away with, the more they wanted to push the risks.

She asked, “If someone is killing college students, what’s the motivation?”

“The only thing I can come up with is drugs.”

Sara was about to ask if drugs were a problem on campus, then realized what a stupid question that was. Instead she said, “Did Ellen Schaffer use?”

“As far as I can tell, she was some kind of health nut, so I doubt it.” He looked in the side mirror before overtaking an eighteen-wheeler in the next lane. “Rosen might have been, but there’s a good case for him being clean, too.”

“What about the affair rumor?”

Jeffrey scowled. “I don’t even know if I trust Richard Carter. He’s like a spoon—always stirring things up. And it’s obvious he couldn’t stand Andy. I wouldn’t put it past him to start a rumor just so he can sit back and enjoy the show.”

“Well, let’s say he’s right,” Sara said. “Could Andy’s father have been having an affair with Schaffer?”

“She wasn’t in any of his classes. She would have no reason to know him. She had plenty of guys her own age throwing themselves at her feet.”

“That might be a reason she would be attracted to an older man. He would seem more sophisticated.”

“Not Brian Keller,” he said. “This guy isn’t exactly Robert Redford.”

“You asked around?” she persisted. “There’s no connection?”

“Not that I could see,” he answered. “I’m going to talk to him tomorrow, though. Maybe he’ll offer something up.”

“Maybe he’ll confess.”

Jeffrey shook his head. “He was in Washington. Frank verified it this afternoon.” After a few seconds, Jeffrey allowed, “He could have hired someone.”

“What was his motivation?”

“Maybe . . .” Jeffrey let his voice trail off. “Jesus, I don’t know. We keep coming back to motivation. Why would anyone do this? What do they have to gain?”

“People only kill for a handful of reasons,” Sara said. “Money, drugs, or some emotional reason like jealousy or rage. Random murders would suggest a serial killer.”

“Christ,” Jeffrey said. “Don’t say that.”

“I’ll admit it’s not likely, but nothing makes sense.” Sara paused. “Then again, Andy could have jumped. Ellen Schaffer could have already been depressed, and finding the body was some kind of trigger—” Sara caught herself. “No pun intended.”

Jeffrey gave her a look.

“Maybe she just killed herself. Maybe both of them did.”

“What about Tess?”

“What about her?” she asked. “It could be that her attack doesn’t have anything to do with the two others. If they’re suicides, I mean.” Sara tried to think it through, but her mind could not put together the right clues. “She could have come across someone doing something illegal in the woods.”

“We went back and forth over every inch and didn’t find anything except the necklace,” Jeffrey said. “Even then, why would the guy stick around and watch you and Tessa?”

“Maybe it was someone else watching . . . just a jogger in the woods.”

“Why would he run when he saw Lena?”

Sara exhaled slowly, thinking she was too sleep-deprived to understand any of this. “I keep going back to that scrape on Andy’s back. Maybe I’ll find something in the autopsy.” She leaned her head in her hand, giving up on trying to be logical. “What else is bothering you?”

His jaw worked, and she knew his answer before he even said it. “Lena.”

Sara suppressed a sigh as she looked out the window. Jeffrey had been worrying about Lena for as long as Sara could remember.

She asked, “What did she do?”—leaving the this time unsaid.

“She didn’t do anything,” he said. “Or maybe she did. I don’t know.” He paused, probably thinking it over. “I think she knew this kid, this Rosen kid. We found her fingerprints on a library book in his apartment.”

“She could have checked it out.”

“No,” he told her. “We looked at her records.”

“They let you see that?”

“We didn’t actually go through the librarians,” Jeffrey told her, and Sara could only imagine what kinds of strings Jeffrey had pulled to get a look at the library’s records. Nan Thomas would have a screaming fit if she ever found out, and Sara would not blame the woman.

Sara suggested, “Lena could have borrowed the book without anyone knowing.”

“Does Lena strike you as the type of person who would read The Thorn Birds?”

“I have no idea,” Sara admitted, though she could not imagine Lena doing something as sedentary as reading, let alone a love story. “Did you ask her? What did she say?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I tried to bring her in. She wouldn’t come.”

“To the station?”

He nodded.

“I wouldn’t come in if you asked me to either.”

He seemed genuinely curious. “Why?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she told him, not even bothering to answer. “You think Lena has something to hide?”

“I don’t know.” He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “She seemed cagey. When we were talking on the hill—after you and Tessa left—she seemed to recognize Andy’s name. When I asked her, she denied it.”

“Do you remember her reaction when we turned over the body?”

“She wasn’t there,” Jeffrey reminded her.

“Right,” Sara remembered.

He said, “We found something else, too. A pair of women’s underwear in his room.”

“Lena’s?” Sara asked, wondering why Jeffrey had not told her this before.

He said, “I’m guessing.”

“What did they look like?”

“Not like what you wear. Small.”

She shot him a look. “Thanks a lot.”

“You know what I mean,” he said. “The kind that’s thinner in the back.”

Sara guessed, “A thong?”

“Probably. Silky, dark red, with lace around the legs.”

“That sounds about as much like Lena as The Thorn Birds.”

Jeffrey shrugged. “You never know.”

“Could they have belonged to Andy Rosen?”

Jeffrey seemed to consider this. “We can’t rule that out, considering what he did to his . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“He could have stolen them from Schaffer.”

“The hair was dark brown,” Jeffrey told her. “Schaffer’s a blonde.”

Sara laughed. “I wouldn’t bet on it.”

Jeffrey was quiet for a beat. “Lena could have been sleeping with Andy Rosen.”

Sara thought this was unlikely, but with Lena there was no telling.

He said, “There was this kid there when I tried to bring Lena in. Some little prick who looked like he belonged in high school. Maybe she’s seeing him. It looked like they were together.”

“So she’s sleeping with Andy Rosen and dating this kid?” Sara shook her head. “Considering what happened to her a year ago, I don’t see Lena playing the field this soon. If ever.” She crossed her arms, leaning against the door. “Are you sure it’s her underwear?”

Jeffrey was quiet, like he was debating whether or not to tell her something.

“What is it?” Sara asked. Then, “Jeff?”

“There’s some . . . material,” he said and Sara wondered why he was being reticent. Probably his knowing Lena attached a certain taboo; he’d never been shy about this sort of thing before. He said, “Even if there’s enough to run DNA, there’s no way in hell Lena will give us a comparison sample. If she’d just give us something to test, we could clear her and this would all be over.”

“If she won’t even go into the station, there’s no way she’ll give blood.”

His voice took on an edge. “I just want to clear her out of this, Sara. If she won’t help herself . . .”

Immediately Sara thought about the rape kit she had performed on Lena a year ago, but she did not volunteer this information. Something about using the DNA collected during the rape exam to possibly tie Lena to Andy Rosen did not sit right with Sara. The act struck her as a second violation. Lena would see it as a betrayal. Anyone would.

“Sara?”

She shook her head. “Just tired,” she told him, trying not to remember the night she had collected the rape kit. Lena’s body had been so badly damaged that she had needed seven stitches to sew her back together. Because of the drugs Lena had been given, Sara had been forced to go very light on the sedative. Until Tessa’s stabbing, doing Lena’s rape kit had been the most horrible event of Sara’s entire medical career.

Sara asked, “What would it prove if Lena did match? Sleeping with Andy Rosen doesn’t mean she had anything to do with his death. Or Tessa’s stabbing.”

“Why would she lie about it?”

“Lying doesn’t make her guilty.”

“In my experience people only lie when they’ve got something to hide.”

“I imagine she’d lose her job if she was having sex with a student.”

“She hates Chuck. I doubt she cares whether she keeps her job or not.”

Sara pointed out, “She’s not your biggest fan right now. She may have lied just to spite you.”

“She can’t be stupid enough to impede an investigation. Not on something like this.”

“Of course she can, Jeffrey. She’s mad at you, and she’s seeing a way to pay you back for kicking her off—”

“I didn’t—”

Sara held up her hands to stop him. They had argued this point so many times already that she could already hear the rest of the sentence before he finished. What it boiled down to was that Jeffrey was angry as hell at Lena and would not admit that most of his anger stemmed from disappointment. Lena’s knee-jerk response was to hate Jeffrey back just as blindly. The situation would have been comical if Sara were not caught right in the middle of it.

Sara said, “Regardless of why, Lena’s not going to give you an inch on this. She pretty much proved that when she wouldn’t come down to the station.”

“Maybe I didn’t approach her quite like I should have,” he allowed, and, judging on past performance, Sara could imagine he had been quite an ass. “That kid she was with. That boy.”

Sara waited, but he took his time finishing his thought.

“There’s something wrong with him.”

“Wrong how?”

“Dangerous,” Jeffrey said. “I’d bet you ten bucks he’s got a record.”

Sara knew better than to take the bet. Any cop worth his salt could recognize an ex-con. That brought her to her next question. “Do you think Lena knows he’s been in trouble before?”

“Who knows what the hell’s going on in her head?”

Sara was just as perplexed.

Jeffrey said, “He pushed me.”

“He pushed you?” Sara asked, certain he meant it figuratively.

“He came up from behind and pushed me.”

“He pushed you?” she repeated, wondering at anyone’s having the stupidity to do such a thing. “Why?”

“He probably thought I pushed Lena down.”

“Did you?”

He looked at her, obviously insulted. “I put my hand on her arm. She freaked out. Jerked her arm back.” Jeffrey stared at the road, silent for a moment. “She was trying so hard to get away she fell on the ground.”

“That sounds like a predictable reaction.”

Jeffrey skipped over her remark. “This kid, he was ready to take me on. A scrawny little shit, probably weighs less than Tess.” Jeffrey shook his head, but there was something appreciative about the way he spoke. Not many people challenged him.

Sara asked, “Why haven’t you run his sheet?”

“I don’t have his name,” Jeffrey told her. Then, “Don’t worry, I followed them to a coffee shop. He left his cup on the table. I took it for prints.” He smiled. “Just a matter of time until I know everything there is to know about the punk.”

Sara was certain he would, and she felt more than a little sorry for Lena’s white knight.

Jeffrey fell silent again, and Sara stared out the window, counting the crosses that marked traffic accidents on the highway. Some of them had wreaths laid at their bases or photographs of people Sara was glad she could not see. A pink teddy bear propped up against the foot of a small cross made her look ahead, her heart lurching in her chest. The drivers in front of them tapped their breaks, slanted red lights gleaming up ahead. The highway was getting crowded as they got closer to Macon. Jeffrey would take the bypass, but they were bound to get caught up in traffic this time of day.

Jeffrey asked, “How are your folks?”

“Angry,” she said. “Angry at me. At you. I don’t know. Mama will barely even talk to me.”

“Has she told you why?”

“She’s just worried,” Sara said, but every second that passed with her parents angry at her twisted in Sara’s chest. Eddie still would not talk to her, but she did not know if that was because he blamed her or because he could not deal with having both of his girls in crisis. Sara was beginning to understand just how hard it was to be strong for everyone else around you when all you really wanted to do was curl up into a ball and be comforted yourself.

“They’ll be okay in a few days,” Jeffrey soothed, resting his hand on her shoulder. He stroked her neck with his thumb, and she wanted to slide across the seat and put her head on his chest. Something stopped her. Without her permission, her mind kept going back to Lena in the hospital, bruised and battered, dark blood oozing from between her legs where she had been cut so deeply. Lena was a small person to begin with, but her cocky attitude normally made her seem larger than life. Lying on the hospital gurney, hands and feet bleeding through the white bandages the ambulance crew had hastily tied on, Lena had seemed more like a little child than a grown woman. Sara had never seen someone so broken.

In the car Sara felt tears in her eyes. She looked out the window, not wanting Jeffrey to see. He was still stroking her neck, but for some reason his touch no longer soothed.

She said, “I’m going to try to get some sleep,” and pulled away from him as she leaned against the car door.

The Heartsdale Medical Center was not nearly as impressive as the name implied. Two stories tall, with the morgue in the basement, the hospital was nothing more than a glorified clinic for the college, which stood on the opposite end of Main Street. As usual, the parking lot was empty but for a few cars. Jeffrey pulled up to the main parking lot in front of the emergency room, bypassing the side entrance Sara normally used. She waited patiently as he backed the car into one of the far spaces.

He put the car in park but left the engine running. “I need to check in with Frank,” he said, taking out his cell phone. “Do you mind starting without me?”

“No,” Sara answered, and part of her was relieved to have some time to herself.

Still, she smiled at Jeffrey before getting out of the car. He had known her for over ten years, and she could sense he understood that something was bothering her. Jeffrey did not like leaving things unresolved. Maybe he was still mad at her about what had happened in the parking deck.

Sara had not really slept during the drive back to Grant. She had been caught in that limbo between sleep and wakefulness, her mind reeling with the events from yesterday. When she did manage to nod off, Sara dreamed of Lena in the hospital last year. In the kind of horrific twist that only dreams can bring, Sara and Lena had switched places, so that it was Sara on the exam table, her feet in stirrups, her body exposed, as Lena took vaginal swabs and combed Sara’s pubic hair for foreign matter. When the black light flickered on to illuminate semen and other body fluids, Sara’s lower half had lit up as if it were on fire.

Sara rubbed her arms as she walked across the parking lot, though it was hardly cold. She looked up at the sky, which was dark and forbidding. She whispered, “It’s coming up a storm,” a phrase her Granny Earnshaw had used when they were little. Sara smiled, her tension eased by the image of her grandmother standing at the kitchen door, hands clasped worriedly to her chest, looking out at the coming storm and telling the children to make sure they all had candles before they went to bed that night.

Inside the emergency room, Sara waved at the night nurse and at Matt DeAndrea, who was filling in for Hare while he was supposed to be on vacation. Not since the summer she started puberty was Sara more glad that her cousin was not around.

“How’s your mama and them?” Matt said, giving a standard greeting. He seemed suddenly to realize what this would invite, and his face paled.

“Fine,” Sara said, forcing a smile. “Everybody’s doing just fine. Thanks for asking.”

Neither of them had much to say after that, so Sara walked along the hallway toward the stairs down to the morgue.

Sara had never made the comparison between the morgue and Grady Hospital, but having just spent so much time in Atlanta, the similarities were glaringly obvious. The medical center had been renovated a few years back, but downstairs the morgue looked much as it had when it was first built in the 1930s. Light blue tile lined the walls, and the floors were a mixture of green and tan linoleum squares. Overhead, the ceiling was splotched with signs of water damage, the recently repaired white patches a sharp contrast against the graying old plaster. The white noise from the compressor over the freezer and the air-conditioning system made a steady hum, something Sara rarely noticed unless she’d been away for a while.

Carlos stood against the porcelain table that was bolted to the floor in the center of the room, his arms crossed over his wide chest. He was a nice kid with swarthy Hispanic looks and a thick accent that Sara had taken some time to get used to. He did not talk much, and when he did, he tended to mumble. Carlos did the shit work, literally and figuratively, and he was very well paid, but Sara felt that she did not know much about him. In the many years Carlos had worked there, he had never said anything personal about himself or complained about the work. Even when there was nothing to do, he always found a chore, sweeping the floors or cleaning the freezer. She was surprised to see him just standing at the table when she entered the morgue. He appeared to have been waiting for her.

“Carlos?” she asked.

“I am not working for Mr. Brock again,” he said, in a way that let her know he was putting his foot down.

She was surprised, not just by the length of the sentence but by the passion behind it.

She asked carefully, “Is there a particular reason why?”

Carlos kept his eyes straight on hers. “He is very strange, and that is all I will say.”

Sara felt a wave of relief. She realized she had been scared he was about to quit.

“All right, Carlos,” she said. “I’m sorry you’re upset.”

“I am not upset,” he said, though obviously he was.

“Okay.” Sara nodded, hoping he was finished. The truth was, she’d been taking up for Dan Brock since their first day of elementary school, when Chuck Gaines had pushed him off the monkey bars in a fit of rage that only an eight-year-old (Chuck had been kept back in kindergarten) can get away with.

Brock was not weird so much as needy, a trait not conducive to the school atmosphere, which operated on the principle of survival of the fittest. Thanks to Cathy and Eddie, Sara had never needed approval from her peers, so it had not bothered her much that she had lived in the netherworld that existed between the popular crowd and the kids who were routinely harassed and tortured. She had always been thought of as the smartest girl in her class, and between her height, her red hair, and her IQ, people had been a little intimidated by her. Brock, on the other hand, had suffered well up until high school, which is how long it took the bullies to realize that no matter how mean they were to him, Brock would always be nice back.

“Dr. Linton?” Carlos asked. Despite her repeated requests, he had never called her Sara.

“Yes?”

He said, “I am sorry about your sister.”

Sara pressed her lips together, nodding her thanks. “Let’s start with the girl,” Sara told him, thinking it would be best to get the most difficult case out of the way first. “Did you take photos and X rays?”

He gave a curt nod but did not comment on the state of the body. He had always been professional in this manner, and she appreciated the solemn way he went about his job.

Sara walked back toward her office, which had a window looking out into the morgue. She sat down at her desk, and even though she had been sitting for the last four and a half hours, it felt good to get off her feet. She picked up the phone and dialed her father’s cell-phone number.

Cathy answered before the first ring completed. “Sara?”

“We’re here,” she told her mother, thinking she should have called earlier. Cathy had obviously been worried.

“Did you find anything?”

“Not yet,” Sara told her, watching Carlos wheel out a black body bag on the gurney. “How’s Tess?”

Cathy paused before answering. “Still quiet.”

Sara watched Carlos unzip the bag and start to maneuver the body onto the porcelain table. Anyone watching would think the procedure barbaric, but the only way for one person to move a dead body onto a table was to manhandle it. Carlos started with the feet, pushing them onto the table, then jerked the rest of the body until it was in place. A plastic bag had been left around the head to help preserve evidence.

Cathy said, “I’m not mad at you.”

Sara exhaled, realizing she had been holding her breath. “I’m glad.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Sara did not answer, mostly because she did not agree with what her mother had said.

“When you were little,” Cathy began, her voice catching, “I always counted on you to keep her out of trouble. You were always the responsible one.”

Sara took a tissue from the box on her desk and patted underneath her eyes. Carlos was trying to remove the T-shirt, but he could not get it over the head. He looked up at Sara, and she made a cutting motion with her hand. The crime-scene techs had already checked for fiber evidence.

Cathy said, “It’s not your fault. It’s not Jeffrey’s fault. It’s just one of those things that happens, and we’ll all get through it.”

Yesterday Sara had longed to hear this, but today it did not bring comfort. For the first time in her life, she could not believe her mother.

“Baby?”

Sara wiped her eyes. “I have to go, Mama.”

“All right.” Cathy paused before saying, “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Sara told her, hanging up the phone. She put her head in her hands, trying to clear her mind. She could not think about Tessa while she cut up Ellen Schaffer. Sara would best serve her sister by finding something that would lead to the capture of the man who had stabbed her. An autopsy was an act of violence itself, the ultimate invasion. Every body tells a story. A person’s life and death can be exposed in all their glory and shame simply by looking beneath the skin.

Sara stood and walked back into the morgue just as Carlos finished cutting away the shirt along the seams so it could be put back together and studied. The material was sprayed with blood, a clean, oblong pattern indicating where the rifle had rested. Sara checked the girl’s toe, noting that it, too, was sprayed with blood. The other foot had been out of range and was clean.

A girlish bra that would have been better suited for a thirteen-year-old covered the young woman’s breasts. Carlos had opened the clasp and was holding a wad of toilet tissue in his hand.

“What’s that?” Sara asked, though she could see what it was.

“She had it in here,” Carlos said, indicating the bra. He put his hand in the other cup and pulled out another wad of tissue.

“Why would she stuff her bra if she was going to kill herself?” Sara asked, though Carlos never answered her questions.

They both turned as they heard footsteps on the stairs.

“Anything?” Jeffrey asked.

“We just started,” Sara told him. “What did Frank say?”

“Nothing,” Jeffrey answered, but she could tell that something was going on. Sara did not know why he was being reticent. Carlos had proved himself to be trustworthy. Most of the time, Sara forgot he had a life outside the morgue.

“Let’s get these off,” Sara said, and she helped Carlos remove the girl’s jeans.

Jeffrey looked at the underwear, which was of the plain cotton variety, not the kind they had found in Andy Rosen’s apartment.

Sara asked, “Did you check the drawers in her room?”

“They’re all different kinds,” he said. “Silk, cotton, thongs.”

“Thongs?”

He shrugged.

Sara moved on. “We found tissue in her bra.”

Jeffrey raised an eyebrow. “She stuffed her bra?”

“If she committed suicide, she would know that someone would find her, that a mortician or an ME would examine her body. Why would she do that?”

“Maybe it was just something she always did? Routine?” Jeffrey suggested, but she could tell he was skeptical.

Sara said, “The tattoo is an old one. Probably three years. That’s just a best guess, but she didn’t get it recently.”

Carlos peeled back the underwear, and Sara and Jeffrey noticed another tattoo at the same time. A word was written in what looked like Arabic.

Jeffrey said, “That wasn’t on Andy’s drawing.”

“It’s not recent by any means,” Sara noted. “You think he left it off on purpose?”

“Trust me, he would’ve put it in if he had seen it.”

“So she wasn’t involved with him,” Sara said, indicating that Carlos should take a photograph of the tattoo. She placed a ruler beside the word for scale. “We’ll have to scan it in and try to find someone who knows what it means.”

Carlos said, “Shalom.”

“I’m sorry?” Sara asked, surprised he had spoken.

“It’s Hebrew,” he said. “It means ‘peace.’ ”

Sara could not give him the benefit of the doubt. “Are you certain?”

“I learned it in Hebrew school,” he said. “My mother is Jewish.”

“Oh,” Sara said, wondering how so many years had passed without her ever learning this information. She glanced at Jeffrey, who was writing something in his notebook. His eyebrows were furrowed, and she wondered what connection he was making.

She turned, forgetting where she was, and hit her head on the scale above the foot of the table.

“Crap,” she said, feeling her scalp for damage. She did not look at Jeffrey or Carlos to see their response. Instead she walked to the metal cabinet by the sinks and took out a sterile gown and a pair of gloves.

She asked Jeffrey, “Can you get my glasses? I think they’re on my desk.”

He did as she asked, and Sara slipped on the gown, then the gloves. She took another pair from the box and slipped them over the first. Carlos wheeled over the chalkboard Sara had bought from the school. Some of the information he had already gathered was filled in on the board. Blank spaces for organ weights and sizes and various other details would be recorded by Carlos through the course of the procedure. Sara liked to see everything in front of her while she performed an autopsy. Visualizing the facts was easier when they were all written down right there.

Using her foot, Sara tapped on the Dictaphone and began, “This is the unembalmed, well-developed, well-nourished body of a Caucasian nineteen-year-old female who reportedly shot herself in the head with a Wingmaster twelve-gauge rifle. She has been identified as Ellen Marjory Schaffer by responding officer. Photographs and X rays were taken under my direction. Under the provisions of the Georgia Death Investigation Act, an autopsy is performed in the morgue of the Grant County Medical Examiner’s Office on . . .”

Jeffrey provided the date, and Sara continued, “Commencing at 20:33 hours, with the assistance of Carlos Quiñonez, forensic technician, and Jeffrey Tolliver, chief of police, Grant County.”

She stopped, looking at the chalkboard for the right information. “She weighs approximately one hundred twenty-five pounds and measures five feet eight inches. There is extensive damage to the head consistent with a rifle blast.” Sara put her hand on the abdomen. “The body has been refrigerated and is cold to the touch. Rigor mortis is full and generalized to the upper extremities.”

Sara continued, calling out identifying marks as she used a pair of scissors to cut away the bag that covered Ellen Schaffer’s head. Congealed blood and gray matter clung to the plastic, and bits of scalp remained in gelatinous clumps.

Carlos told her, “The rest of the scalp is in the freezer.”

“I’ll look at it afterward,” Sara told him, peeling the bag away from what was left of Ellen Schaffer’s head. Barely more than a bloody stump remained, with fragments of blond hair and teeth lodged in the brain stem. More photographs were taken before Sara picked up the scalpel to begin the internal examination. She felt punch-drunk from lack of sleep as she made the standard Y incision, and she closed her eyes for a moment to get her bearings.

Every organ was removed and weighed, cataloged and recorded, as Sara called out her findings. The stomach held what must have been Schaffer’s last meal: nut-grain cereal that probably looked much the same as it had in the box.

Sara clamped off the intestines and handed them to Carlos to do what was called running the gut. He used a hose attached to one of the sinks to wash out the intestinal tract, a sieve below the drain catching what sluiced out. The odor was horrible, and Sara always felt guilty about passing along the job until she got a whiff of the contents.

She snapped off her gloves and walked to the far side of the morgue where the lightbox was set up. Carlos had snapped in the pre-autopsy X rays, and either lack of sleep or plain stupidity had made Sara forget to look at them earlier. She studied the entire series twice before noticing a familiar shape in the lungs.

“Jeff,” she said, calling him over.

He stared at the film on the lightbox several seconds before asking, “Is that a tooth?”

“We’ll find out soon enough.” Sara double-gloved again before taking the left lung out of the viscera bag. On presentation the pleural tissue was smooth, with no evidence of consolidation. Sara had set the lungs aside to biopsy later, but she did this now using the surgically sharpened bread-loafing knife. “There’s slight blood aspiration,” she told Jeffrey. The tooth was found in the bottom right quadrant of the left lung.

Jeffrey asked, “Could the shot blast have knocked it down her throat?”

“She aspirated the tooth,” Sara told him. “She inhaled it into her lungs.”

Jeffrey rubbed his eyes with his hands. He summed up the inconsistency in plain words. “She was breathing when the tooth was knocked out.”