A Faint Cold Fear

10

Sara drove her car from the campus back to the morgue on autopilot, mulling over every detail of last night’s autopsies. There was something about Andy Rosen’s death that still troubled her, and, unlike Jeffrey, she needed more than a coincidence to be able to sign off on murder. At best Sara could say only that his death was suspicious, and even that was pushing it. There was no scientific evidence suggesting foul play. The tox screen had come back clean, and the autopsy had been completely normal. It was very possible that Andy Rosen’s suicide was still just that.

William “Scooter” Dickson was another deal altogether. The pornography in his VCR, the foam between the belt and Scooter’s skin to prevent marking, the bolt in the wall that had obviously been there a long time—all of these pointed toward autoerotic asphyxiation. Sara had seen only one case of this in her career, but there had been several papers about it in the Journal of Forensic Science a few years ago, when manual strangulation had reached the height of its popularity.

“Crap,” Sara said, realizing she’d passed the hospital. She continued down Main Street toward the college, then made an illegal U-turn in front of the police station. She waved at Brad Stephens, who was getting out of his squad car. He covered his eyes, pretending he didn’t see her as she nearly clipped a white Cadillac parked in front of Burgess’s Cleaners.

Sara passed the children’s clinic, the sign outside faded and rotting because Jeffrey had chosen the only sign maker in town to cheat with when they were married. She sighed, looking at the dilapidated sign, wondering if she should attach some greater meaning to its irreparable condition. Perhaps it was foreshadowing what would eventually happen with Sara and Jeffrey. Cathy Linton liked to say that you can never go back.

Sara slammed on the brakes, almost missing the turn into the hospital again. Working around children all the time, Sara was not given to cursing, but she let loose a couple obscenities as she put the car in reverse. A couple more came out when the front wheel bumped up over the curb. She parked the car on the side of the building and took the stairs down to the morgue two at a time.

Carlos had not yet returned from the college with the body, and Jeffrey was tracking down William Dickson’s parents, so Sara had the morgue to herself. She walked toward her office but stopped just outside the doorway. A large flower arrangement was on the corner of her desk. Jeffrey had not sent her flowers in years. She walked around the display, feeling a big, silly grin on her face. He had forgotten that she was not crazy about carnations, but there were other flowers, beautiful flowers, whose names Sara could not remember, and the whole office was filled with their fragrance.

“Jeffrey,” she said, feeling her cheeks strain from the smile on her face. He must have ordered them this morning before all hell broke loose. She slid out the card, her smile fading when she read the note from Mason James.

Sara looked around, wondering where she could put the flowers so that Jeffrey would not see them, then giving up, because she was not a sneaky person and was not about to start hiding things.

She sat down in her chair, putting the card by the vase. There were plenty of other items on her desk to hold her attention. Molly, Sara’s nurse at the children’s clinic, had dropped off a stack of papers this morning, and Sara could probably spend the next twelve hours going through them without even making a dent. She slipped on her glasses and signed off on a stack of about sixty forms before noticing that Carlos had arrived.

She watched Carlos through the window as he set out the instruments for autopsy. He was slow and methodical, checking each piece for damage or signs of wear. Sara watched him for a few more minutes before deciding to take care of her phone messages. She noticed Carlos’s handwriting on the first one. Brock had called to see when he could come to get Andy Rosen’s body. She picked up the phone and dialed the funeral home.

Brock’s mother answered, and Sara spent several minutes catching her up on Tessa’s condition, knowing that the news would spread around town before lunchtime. Penny Brock didn’t have much to do at the funeral home, and between taking naps and greeting the occasional customer, she spent most of her time gossiping on the phone.

Brock sounded his usual jovial self when he finally came on the line. “Hello there, Sara,” he said. “You calling to talk about storage fees?”

She laughed, knowing he was trying to make a joke.

She said, “I was calling to see how much time I have. Is the service today?”

“Set for nine tomorrow morning,” Brock said. “I was gonna do him last thing today. How bad’s he messed up?”

“Not bad,” Sara said. “Just the usual.”

“You get him finished around three, and I’ll have plenty of time.”

Sara checked her watch. It was already eleven-thirty. She did not even know why she was keeping Andy Rosen in-house. His tissue and organs had been biopsied, and Brock had taken several vials of urine and blood that she could study at her leisure. There was absolutely nothing more she could think to do.

She said, “You know, just come pick him up now.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes,” Sara told him. With another body coming in, they probably needed the space in the freezer.

“You can have him after the service if you think of anything,” Brock volunteered. “I was gonna drop him off at the crematory around lunchtime.” He lowered his voice. “I like to wait around now to make sure it’s done right, if you know what I mean. People are antsy about cremation these days, on account of that rascal up in north Georgia.”

“Right,” Sara said, recalling the case of a family-owned crematory that had stacked bodies in car trunks and against trees on their property instead of cremating them. The state had spent nearly $10 million removing and identifying the remains.

Brock said, “It’s a shame, really. Such a clean way to handle things. Not that I don’t like the extra money with a ground interment, but some folks are so messed up it’s just best to handle it quickly.”

“His parents?” Sara asked, wondering if Keller had threatened his wife in front of Brock.

“They came by for the arrangements last night and I tell you . . .” Brock’s voice trailed off. He was very discreet, but Sara could usually get him to talk. Sometimes his candor made her wonder if she had somehow stumbled into the crosshairs of one of his famous unrequited crushes.

Sara gave him some prodding. “Yes?”

“Well . . .” he began, his voice even lower. Brock knew better than anybody else that his mother was the main artery to Grant County gossip.

He said, “His mama was a bit concerned about cremating him after the autopsy. Thought it couldn’t be done. Lord, where do these people get their notions?”

Sara waited.

“My feeling was, she wasn’t too happy about the whole thing to begin with, but then the daddy stepped in and said that’s what the boy wanted and that’s what they were gonna do.”

“If those were his wishes, they should be honored,” Sara said. Even though she dealt with death all the time, Sara had never considered letting anyone know how she wanted to be buried. Thinking about it now made her shudder.

“Some people come in with their pre-needs,” Brock said, chuckling. “Boy, the stories I could tell you about what some folks wanna be buried with.”

Sara closed her eyes, willing him not to share.

Brock took the cue from her silence and moved on. “Tell you the truth, what with them being Jewish, God bless ’em, I thought they’d wanna do it fast, but they’ve done it all normal-like. I guess they’re not real into it like some.”

“No,” Sara answered. As a medical examiner, she’d seen only one case where her performing an autopsy was contested by a family of Orthodox Jews. While she admired their devotion to religion, she imagined that the family was relieved to know that their father had died of a heart attack rather than purposefully driven his car into the lake.

“Well . . .” Brock cleared his throat uncomfortably, probably interpreting her silence as disapproval. “I’ll be over in two shakes.”

Sara hung up the phone, slipping on her glasses as she thumbed through the rest of the messages. The white noise of the morgue was punctuated by the pop and flash as Carlos took pictures of the body. Sara stopped on the last phone message, seeing that she had missed a drop-in visit from a pharmaceutical company’s rep. Sara frowned, knowing he would have left more free samples for her patients had she been there to talk him into it.

Under the messages was a slick brochure from the rep advertising the fact that an asthma drug had just been approved for children. In fact, pediatricians like Sara had been prescribing the inhaler to patients for years; the drug companies used the new FDA approval for pediatric use to extend their patents on the drug so they could keep gouging the consumer and not have to worry about competition from generics. Sara often thought if they stopped paying for fancy brochures and expensive television spots, the companies might be able to drop the price on their drugs so that people could afford them.

The trash was across the room, and she threw the brochure toward it and missed just as Jeffrey came into the office.

“Hey,” Jeffrey said, tossing a manila folder down on her desk. He dropped a large paper bag on top of it.

She stood up to get the brochure, and he put his hand on her arm.

“What—”

He kissed her on the mouth, something he did not tend to do in public. The kiss was chaste, more like a friendly hello or, considering how Jeffrey had behaved with Mason James the previous afternoon, a dog marking a fire hydrant.

“Hey,” she said, giving him a curious look as she put the brochure in its proper place.

When she turned back around, Jeffrey was cupping one of the carnations in his hand. “You don’t like these.”

She was more pleased that he had remembered this detail than if he had actually sent the flowers. “No,” she said, watching him take the card out of the envelope.

“Please, go ahead and read it,” she offered, though he was doing just that.

He took his time tucking the card back into the envelope. “That’s nice,” he said, then quoted from the card, “ ‘I’m here if you need me.’ ”

She crossed her arms, waiting for him to say whatever he needed to say.

“Long morning,” he said, closing the door. His expression was neutral, and she could tell he was trying to move on when he asked, “Tess the same?”

“Better, actually,” she told him, slipping on her glasses as she sat down. “What did you want to talk about?”

He poked his finger at one of the flowers. “Lena was hit this morning.”

Sara sat up. “She was in a car accident?”

“No,” he said. “It was Ethan White, that punk I told you about. The one she’s been seeing. The one who tried to push me down.”

“That’s his name?” Sara asked, because for some reason the name sounded harmless to her.

“One of them,” Jeffrey said. “Frank and I went to talk to her this morning . . .” He let his voice trail off as he stared at the flower. Sara sat back in her chair as he recounted his morning to her, ending with Jill Rosen’s showing him the bruises on her neck.

Sara stated the obvious. “She’s being abused.”

“Yes,” Jeffrey said.

“I didn’t see any signs of abuse when I autopsied Andy Rosen.”

“It’s possible to hurt somebody without leaving any evidence.”

“Either way, an argument could be made that Rosen killed himself to stop the abuse,” Sara said. “His note was to his mother, not his father. Maybe he couldn’t take it anymore.”

“It’s possible,” Jeffrey agreed. “Except for Tessa, we wouldn’t suspect anything with Andy.”

“How likely is it that they’re not connected?”

“Shit, Sara, I don’t know.”

Sara reminded him. “We don’t have any evidence that Andy Rosen was murdered. Maybe we should take him out of the equation and go with what we know.”

“Which is?”

“Ellen Schaffer was murdered. Maybe someone thought they would take advantage of Andy’s suicide and make it seem like she copied him. That sort of chain reaction is not uncommon on college campuses. MIT had twelve suicides one year.”

“What about Tess?” he reminded her. Tessa was always the wild card, the victim who did not make sense.

“That could be a different crime altogether,” Sara said. “Unless we find some sort of connection, maybe we should treat them as two separate incidents.”

“And this one?” Jeffrey indicated the body out in the morgue.

“I have no idea,” she said. “How did his parents take it?”

“About as well as you would expect,” he said, but he didn’t elaborate.

“We might as well get started,” she told him, moving the brown paper bag off the folder so she could read the report. Jeffrey had made copies of his notes, and there was an inventory from the scene. Sara skimmed these, but out of the corner of her eye she could see Jeffrey touching one of the bell-shaped purple flowers.

When Sara had finished, she pointed to the stack of journals in the only other chair in the office. “You can put those on the floor.”

“I’m sick of sitting,” he said, kneeling beside her desk. He rubbed his hand on her leg. “You get enough sleep?”

She put her hand over his, thinking she should have Mason send her flowers every day if it made Jeffrey this attentive.

“I’m okay,” she told him, returning her attention to the file. “You got these back fast,” she said, meaning the scene-of-crime photos.

“Brad did them in the darkroom,” he told her. “And you might want to watch it the next time you take a U-turn in front of the police station.”

She gave an innocent smile, then indicated the brown paper bag. “What’s this?”

“Prescription bottles,” he said, dumping the contents on her desk. She could tell from the black powder on the containers that they had already been dusted. There had to be at least twenty bottles.

She asked, “All of these belonged to the victim?”

“His name’s on them.”

“Antidepressants,” Sara said, lining up the bottles one by one across her desk.

“He was shooting Ice.”

“Handsome and smart,” Sara noted wryly, still lining up the bottles, trying to classify them into sections. “Valium, which is contraindicated with antidepressants.” She studied the labels, all of which had the same prescribing doctor. The name didn’t ring any bells, but the scripts were setting off all kinds of alarms in Sara’s head.

She started to read off the prescriptions. “Prozac, about two years old. Paxil, Elavil.” She paused, noting the dates. “Looks like he tried them all and settled on the Zoloft, which is—” She paused, then let out a “Wow.”

“What?”

“Three hundred fifty milligrams of Zoloft a day. That’s high.”

“What’s the average?”

Sara shrugged. “I don’t give this to my kids,” she told him. “Educated guess for an adult would be fifty to one hundred milligrams tops.” She continued with the bottles. “Ritalin, of course. His generation grew up on that crap. More Valium, lithium, amantadine, Paxil, Xanax, cyproheptadine, busiprone, Wellbutrin, Buspar, Elavil. Another of Zoloft. Another.” She grouped the three bottles of Zoloft together, noting that they had each been filled at different pharmacies on different dates.

“What are these for?”

“Specifically? Depression, sleeplessness, anxiety. They’re all for the same thing, but they work in different ways.” She rolled her chair back to the shelf by the filing cabinet and found her pharmacological guide. “I’ll have to look these up,” she said, rolling back to the desk. “Some of them I know, but I have no idea about the others. One of my Parkinson’s kids is on busiprone for anxiety. Sometimes you can take these together, but not all of them. That would end up being toxic.”

“Could he be selling them?” Jeffrey asked. “He had the needles. We found a stash of pot and ten tabs of acid in his closet.”

“There’s not really a market for antidepressants,” Sara told him. “Anybody can get a prescription for them nowadays. It’s just a matter of finding the right—or in this case the wrong—doctor.” She indicated a couple of the bottles she had set aside. “Ritalin and Xanax have street value.”

“I can go to the elementary school and score ten pills of each for around a hundred dollars,” Jeffrey pointed out. He held up a large plastic bottle. “At least he’s taking his vitamins.”

“Yocon,” she said, reading the ingredients. “Might as well start with this one.” Sara thumbed through the book, finding the appropriate entry. She scanned the description, summarizing, “It’s a trade name for yohimbine, which is an herb. It’s supposed to help the libido.”

Jeffrey took back the bottle. “It’s an aphrodisiac?”

“Not technically,” Sara answered, reading further. “Supposedly it helps with everything from premature ejaculation to maintaining a harder erection.”

“How come I’ve never heard of it?”

Sara gave him a knowing look. “You never needed to.”

Jeffrey smiled, setting the Yocon back on her desk. “He’s a twenty-year-old kid. Why would he need something like this?”

“The Zoloft could cause him to be anorgasmic.”

Jeffrey narrowed his eyes. “He couldn’t come?”

“Well, that’s another way of putting it,” Sara allowed. “He could achieve and maintain an erection but have a problem ejaculating.”

“Jesus Christ, no wonder he was choking himself.”

Sara ignored his comment, double-checking the drug in her guide just to be sure. “ ‘Side effects: anorgasmia, anxiety, increased appetite, decreased appetite, insomnia . . . ‘ “

“That might explain the Xanax.”

Sara looked up from the book. “No doctor in his right mind would prescribe all of these pills together.”

Jeffrey compared some of the labels. “He used about four different pharmacies.”

“I don’t imagine one pharmacist would fill all of these. It’s too reckless.”

“We’ll need something solid to get a warrant for pharmacy records,” he said. “Do you recognize the doctor?”

“No,” she said, sliding open the bottom drawer of her desk. She pulled out the phone book for Grant County and surrounding areas. A quick search revealed that the man was not listed. “He’s not affiliated with the health clinic or the school?”

“No,” Jeffrey told her. “He could be in Savannah. One of the pharmacies is listed there.”

“I don’t have a Savannah phone book.”

“They’ve got this new thing,” Jeffrey said, teasing her. “It’s called the Internet.”

“All right,” Sara said, forgoing the lecture on how wonderful technology was. She could see its application for someone like Jeffrey, but as far as Sara was concerned, she saw too many pasty, overweight kids in her practice to appreciate the benefits of staring at a computer all day.

Jeffrey suggested, “Maybe it’s not a doctor?”

“Unless the pharmacist knows you, you have to have a DEA number when you call in a script. It’s on a database.”

“So maybe someone stole a number from a retired doctor?”

“He’s not prescribing narcotics or OxyContin. I imagine these wouldn’t throw up any red flags with government regulators.” Sara frowned. “Still, I’m not sure what the purpose is. These aren’t stimulants. You can’t really get high off any of them. The Xanax can be addictive, but he’s got the methamphetamine and pot, which do a hell of a lot better jobs.”

Carlos would count and classify the pills later, but on impulse Sara opened one of the Zoloft bottles. Without taking them out, she compared the yellow tablets to the drawing in the book. “They match.”

Jeffrey opened the next bottle while Sara took the third. He said, “Mine don’t.”

Sara peered into the bottle. “No,” she agreed, opening the top drawer of her desk. She found a pair of tweezers and used them to remove one of the clear capsules. A fine white powder was packed inside. “We can send it off and find out what’s in it.”

Jeffrey was checking each bottle in turn. “Is there money in the budget for a rush?”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Sara told him, slipping the capsule into a small evidence bag. She helped him check the contents of the other bottles, but all of them had some sort of imprint identifying the maker or drug name.

Jeffrey said, “He could be using the capsule shells for other drugs.”

“Let’s test the unknown ones first,” Sara suggested, knowing how expensive a wild-goose chase would be. If they were in Atlanta, she would certainly have the resources, but the budget in Grant County was so tight that some months Sara had to borrow latex gloves from the clinic.

She asked, “Where is Dickson from?”

“Right here,” Jeffrey said.

Sara tried her earlier question, thinking Jeffrey was in a better place to talk about it now.

“How did his parents take the news?”

“Better than I thought,” Jeffrey said. “I gathered he was a handful.”

“Like Andy Rosen,” Sara pointed out. She had filled him in on Hare’s impression of the Rosen family during the drive back from Atlanta.

“If our only connection here is that we’ve got two spoiled twenty-something boys, that means half the kids at the school are in danger.”

“Rosen was manic-depressive,” Sara reminded him.

“Dickson’s parents said he wasn’t. He never mentioned anything about therapy. As far as they knew, their son was as healthy as a horse.”

“Would they have known?”

“They don’t seem very involved, but the father made it clear he was paying all the bills. Something like that would have come up.”

“He could see someone at the health center on campus for free.”

“It might be tricky getting access to clinic documents.”

Sara suggested, “You could ask Rosen again.”

“I think she’s tapped out,” Jeffrey told her, a dark expression on his face. “We interviewed the entire dorm, and nobody knew a damn thing about the kid.”

“From the smell in his room, I’d guess he spent most of his time there.”

“If Dickson was dealing, nobody’s going to admit to knowing him anyway. Every toilet in the dorm started to flush when it got around that we were asking questions.”

Sara mulled over what they had. “So both he and Rosen were isolated loner types. Both were into drugs.”

“Rosen’s tox screen was clear.”

“That’s hit or miss,” Sara reminded him. “The lab only tests for the substances I specify. There are thousands of other drugs he could have used that I just didn’t know to screen for.”

“I think somebody wiped down Dickson’s room.”

She waited for him to continue.

“There was a bottle of vodka in the fridge, half full, but no prints. Some beer cans and other stuff had prints from the victim and a couple of latents probably from the store clerk or whoever sold them to him.” He paused. “We’re gonna try to run the syringe to see what was in it. The one on the floor is pretty trashed. They scraped the wood, but I don’t know if they’ll be able to get a good sample.” He paused again, as if there was something else he did not want to say. “Lena found the syringe.”

“How’d that happen?”

“She saw it under the bed.”

“Did she touch it?”

“All over.”

“Does she have an alibi?”

“I was with Lena all morning,” Jeffrey said. “She was with White all night. They alibi each other.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I don’t trust either of them right now, especially considering Ethan White’s criminal background. You don’t wake up one day and stop being a racist. The only thing that ties all of them together, including Tess, is something to do with race.”

Sara knew where he was going with this. “We’ve talked this through already. How would anyone know I was going to bring Tessa to the scene? It’s too improbable.”

“Lena just keeps popping up too much in this for her to not be a part of it.”

Sara knew what he meant. They were having the same problem with Andy Rosen’s alleged suicide. Coincidences were seldom really that.

“This White,” Jeffrey began, “he’s a nasty piece of shit, Sara. I hope you never meet him.” His tone turned harsh. “What the hell is she doing with somebody like that?”

Sara sat back in her chair, and she waited for his attention. “Considering what Lena’s been through, it’s no wonder she’s mixed up with someone like Ethan White. He’s a dangerous man. I know you keep calling him a kid, but from what you’ve told me, he doesn’t act like a kid. Lena could be attracted to that danger. She’s going with the known quantity.”

He shook his head, like that was something he could not accept. Sometimes Sara wondered if he knew Lena at all. Jeffrey tended to see people the way he wanted to see them rather than the way they really were. This had actually been a running problem in Sara’s marriage, and she did not like being reminded of it now.

Sara said, “Except for Ellen Schaffer, this could be a series of coincidences, compounded by you and Lena being in the pissing contest to end all pissing contests.” She put her finger to his mouth to shush him. “I know what you’re going to say, but you can’t deny that there’s hostility between you and Lena. As a matter of fact, she could be protecting White just to piss you off.”

“It’s possible,” he agreed, much to her surprise.

Sara sat back in her chair. “Do you really think she’s been drinking?” she asked. “Drinking enough to have a problem?”

He shrugged, and Sara was reminded again of how much Jeffrey hated alcoholics. His father had been a violent drunk, and though Jeffrey claimed to have transcended his abusive childhood, Sara knew that an alcoholic could set Jeffrey off more quickly than a murderer could.

Sara said, “Being hungover doesn’t mean she has a problem—it just means she had too much to drink one night.” Sara let that sink in before continuing. “And what about this?” she asked, paging through the pictures. She showed him the photo of the stomped syringe on the floor.

“I’m pretty sure she didn’t do that,” he admitted. “Eyeballing the tread with White’s shoe, it’s almost identical.”

“No,” Sara said. “You’re missing the bigger question. Dickson had two syringes of the purest meth you can buy. If he wanted to kill himself—or if someone wanted to make it look like he killed himself—why not use the second syringe? The meth was so strong that the second dose would have killed him almost instantly.”

“Scarfing is a pretty embarrassing way to go,” Jeffrey pointed out, using the slang for autoerotic asphyxiation. “Could be somebody who hated him.”

“That hook was in the wall a long time,” Sara told him, finding the photograph. “The belts show wear patterns to indicate they’ve been used like this before. The foam would keep the leather from marking his neck. He had it all set up, including the porn on the television.” She fanned through the pictures as she talked. “He probably thought he was safe sitting down. Most of these cases are closet rods and chairs that slip out from under their feet.” She indicated the prescription bottles. “If he was anorgasmic, he would certainly be looking for a better way to build a mousetrap.”

Jeffrey could not let Lena go. “Why would Lena contaminate the scene if she didn’t have anything to hide? She never did anything like that before.”

Sara could not answer his question. “If White is the perpetrator, what’s his motivation for killing Scooter?”

Jeffrey shook his head. “No reason that I can see.”

“Drugs?” Sara asked.

“White checks out clean every week as part of his parole, but Lena had some Vicodin in her apartment.”

“Did you ask her about it?”

“She said it’s for the pain from what happened to her last year.”

Unbidden, an image of Lena during the rape exam came to Sara’s mind.

Jeffrey said, “She had a valid prescription.”

Sara realized she had lost track of the conversation for a moment. She asked, “Schaffer didn’t use drugs?”

“No.”

“Dickson doesn’t sound like an ethnic name.”

“Southern Baptist, born and bred.”

“He wasn’t seeing anyone?”

“Smelling like that?” Jeffrey reminded her.

“Good point.” Sara stood, wondering where Brock was. “Can we start? I told Mama I would drive back as soon as I can.”

Jeffrey asked, “How’s Tessa?”

“Physically? She’ll recover.” Sara felt herself tearing up. “Don’t ask me about the rest, okay?”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Okay.”

She opened the door and stepped out into the morgue. “Carlos,” she said, “Brock’s going to be here soon. You can take your break when he gets here.”

Jeffrey seemed curious but did not ask the obvious question. He told Carlos, “Good call on that tattoo. You were right.”

Carlos smiled, something he never did when Sara complimented him.

She tied the gown around her waist as she walked over to the lightbox to look at the X rays Carlos had taken of William Dickson. After she was certain she had given each film a thorough review, she walked back to the body.

The scale hanging over the end of the table swayed in the breeze, and even though Carlos never forgot, Sara checked to see that the weight was set back to zero. Brock had said he would be right over, but he had yet to show. Sara did not want to start the formal autopsy until he was gone.

She said, “I’ll do a cursory exam before Brock gets here.”

She put on a pair of gloves and pulled back the sheet, exposing William Dickson to the harsh overhead lights. A perfect impression of the belt looked painted in black on his neck. His left hand was still wrapped around his penis.

Sara asked Jeffrey, “He was left-handed?”

“Does it matter?”

“Really?” Sara asked, surprised. Granted, she had not given it any thought, but she had always assumed that a man would use his dominant hand.

Jeffrey looked away as she unwrapped William Dickson’s hand from his penis. The fingers remained curled, but the rigor was slowly dissipating in the upper body, where it had first started. The tips of his fingers were dark purple, and his penis showed vividly where his hand had been.

“Ouch,” Carlos whispered, and it was the first time he had ever commented on anything Sara had found. He was looking at the pronounced cork-colored bilateral ridges around the testicles.

“Are those knife wounds?” Jeffrey asked.

“It looks more like electrical burns,” Sara said, recognizing the color. “Fresh, probably within the last few days. This could explain the electrical cord by the bed.” She picked up a swab and pressed it to the burn, rolling off a slick glob that looked like ointment. She sniffed it, saying, “This smells like Vaseline.”

Carlos held out a bag for the swab.

Jeffrey asked, “Are you supposed to use that on burns?”

“No, but considering his medicine cabinet, he doesn’t strike me as the type to read the directions.” She studied the burns. “He could have been using the Vaseline as a lubricant.”

Carlos and Jeffrey exchanged a look of disagreement.

Jeffrey said, “He was probably using Tiger Balm. There was a jar of it by the TV.”

Sara remembered the jar from the picture, but she had thought nothing of it. “Isn’t that for sore muscles?”

Neither one of them answered, so Sara returned to the burns. “He might have been using electrical stimulation to help him reach orgasm.”

Jeffrey said, “That’s not the first thing that would pop into my mind to take care of that.”

“He was shooting pure meth. I doubt he was thinking clearly most of the time.” She asked Carlos, “Can you help me turn him over?”

The young man put on a pair of gloves, and they both maneuvered Dickson onto his stomach. There was pronounced lividity on the dead boy’s buttocks and a long horizontal mark on his back where he had been leaning up against the bed.

She examined William Dickson from head to toe, not really certain what she was looking for. Finally she found something to remark upon.

“There’s scarring around his anus,” she told Jeffrey, who was looking at the sinks.

“He was gay?” Jeffrey asked.

“Not necessarily,” Sara said, snapping off her gloves. She walked over for a new pair, saying, “There’s no telling when or how it was done. Some heterosexual men are into that sort of thing.”

Jeffrey squared his shoulders as if to say, Not this heterosexual man.

He pointed out, “If he was gay, this could be some kind of hate crime.”

“Do you have any other evidence that he was gay?”

“No one is saying anything about him.”

“What about the tape he was watching?”

“Straight,” Jeffrey conceded.

“You might want to go back and look for something he could use on himself. Considering what else he was into, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had an anal plug or—”

Jeffrey stopped her. “Something like a giant red pacifier?”

She nodded and he scowled, probably remembering that he had touched it.

Sara went back to work. She took photographs of what she had found, then asked Carlos to help her turn the body again. Dickson was loosening up, but the rigor still made it awkward.

She repeated the examination on the front of Dickson’s body, checking every nook and crevice. His jaw was loose enough for her to force open his mouth and she could not see anything obstructing the airway. The furrow marks around his neck and the petechiae dotting the skin around his bloodshot eyes were all consistent with strangulation.

She told Jeffrey, “Pressure against the carotid arteries, which take oxygenated blood to the brain, would bring about transient cerebral hypoxia. It takes about ten to fifteen seconds before loss of consciousness from the occlusion.”

Jeffrey asked, “In English.”

“The object is to cut off the blood flow to the head in order to increase the pleasure from masturbation. Either he mistimed it or got carried away or passed out from the loss of blood, or he came down too hard from the meth . . .” Sara let her voice trail off, knowing that Jeffrey was considering all of these things. She said, “I’ll check the hyoid and thyroid cartilages when I open the neck, but I doubt they’ve been crushed. Most of the pressure was on the carotids. I’m telling you, between the hook and the padding on the belt, it looks like he knew what he was doing.”

“Looks like,” Jeffrey repeated, but Sara could not share his skepticism.

“I guess we can go ahead and start,” she said, thinking the internal examination would give them something more conclusive.

“You don’t want to wait for Brock?”

“He’s probably been held up,” she said. “We’ll just start and take a break when he comes.”

Sara tapped on the Dictaphone and proceeded with William Dickson’s autopsy, calling out the usual findings, examining every organ and every patch of skin under the magnifying glass until she was certain there was nothing else she could do. With the exception of a fatty liver and a softening in the brain consistent with long-term drug use, there was nothing remarkable about the boy other than the way he had died.

She ended the dictation with the same conclusion she had given Jeffrey earlier. “Death is due to the occlusion of the carotid arteries with cerebral hypoxia.” She tapped off the mike, removing her gloves.

“Nothing,” Jeffrey summarized.

“Nothing,” Sara agreed, putting on a fresh pair of gloves. She was sewing the chest together with a standard baseball stitch when the service elevator by the stairs dinged.

Carlos was gone before the doors opened.

“Hey, lady,” Brock said, rolling a stainless-steel gurney into the morgue. “Sorry I’m late. Some recently bereaveds showed up I had to deal with. I woulda had Mama call, but you know.” He smiled at Jeffrey, then back at Sara, unable to say that he couldn’t trust his own mother. “Anyway, I figgered you folks could use the extra time.”

“That’s fine,” Sara assured him, walking toward the freezer.

“I’m not getting this one,” Brock said, indicating Dickson. “Parker’s over in Madison got ’em.” The gurney caught on a broken tile, and Brock stumbled.

Jeffrey asked him, “Can I give you a hand?”

Brock chuckled, righting himself. He said, “I got my license and registration, Chief,” as if Jeffrey had pulled him over for a traffic stop.

Sara wheeled out Andy Rosen and started to help Brock transfer the body.

Brock asked, “You need your bag?”

“Just bring it by sometime tomorrow,” she told him. Then, thinking of Carlos, she amended, “Actually, do you mind using yours?”

“I’m like the Boy Scouts,” he told her, reaching under the gurney and removing a dark green body bag with the Brock and Sons emblem printed in gold across the side.

Sara tugged the zipper while he laid out the bag on his gurney.

“Nice incision,” Brock noted. “I can just glue that together and stick some cotton on it, no problem.”

“Good,” Sara told him, not knowing what else to say.

“Took a look at him yesterday when I was here just to see what the embalming would be like.” He gave a resigned sigh. “Guess I can use some putty to patch the head. That sucker’ll leak sure as I’m standing here.”

Sara stopped what she was doing. “What will leak?”

He pointed to the forehead. “The hole. Thought you saw that, Sara. I’m sorry.”

“No,” Sara said, grabbing the magnifying glass off the clip. She pushed back Andy Rosen’s hair, finding a small puncture wound in the scalp. The body had been sitting for a while, giving the skin time to contract away from the hole. Sara could easily see it without the magnifier.

She said, “I can’t believe I missed this.”

“You examined his head,” Jeffrey told her. “I saw you do it.”

“I was so tired last night,” she said, thinking that was a poor excuse. “Goddammit.”

Brock was visibly shocked by the utterance. Sara knew she should apologize, but she was too angry. The puncture wound on Andy Rosen’s forehead was obviously from a needle. Someone had given him an injection in his scalp, hoping the small wound would be hidden by the hair follicles. Had Brock not pointed it out, she would have never seen it.

She told Jeffrey, “I need Carlos. We’re going to take blood and tissue samples again.”

Jeffrey asked, “Is there any blood left?”

Brock said, “We don’t—”

“Of course there is,” Sara interrupted. Then, more to herself, she said, “I want to excise this area around his forehead. Who knows what else I missed?”

She took off her glasses, so angry her vision was blurred. “Goddammit,” she repeated. “How could I have missed this?”

“I missed it, too,” Jeffrey said.

Sara bit her lower lip so that she would not explode. She told Brock, “I need him for at least another hour.”

“Uh, yeah,” Brock told her, anxious to leave. “Just call me when you’re finished.”

Sara sat at her kitchen counter, staring at the microwave, wondering if she was going to give herself cancer sitting this close to the machine. She was so tired she did not care, and so angry with herself for missing the needle puncture in Andy Rosen’s scalp that she almost welcomed the punishment. Three hours of the most intricate physical examination Sara had ever performed in her life had revealed nothing else on Rosen. From there she had performed the same detailed examination on William Dickson’s body, making Carlos and Jeffrey follow her every move to triple-check what she was doing.

She had spent another hour with her eyes pressed to the microscope, studying the pieces of Ellen Schaffer’s scalp that had been recovered at the scene. By then Jeffrey was able to convince Sara that even if the evidence was not damaged beyond detection, she was too tired to find it. She needed to go home and get some sleep. He had promised that after she got some rest, he would drive her back to the morgue so she could review everything again. The idea had seemed right at the time, but guilt and the need for answers had kept Sara from even thinking about closing her eyes. She had missed something crucial to the case, and but for Brock, Andy Rosen would have been cremated, destroying all hope of Sara’s finding the one thing that would prove he was murdered.

The oven timer beeped, and Sara pulled out the chicken-and-pasta dinner, knowing before she peeled off the film that she would not be able to eat it. Even the dogs turned up their noses at the smell, and she contemplated taking the meal to the outside garbage before laziness won over and she dumped it down the garbage disposal in the sink.

The refrigerator did not have much on offer, except for a tangerine that had shriveled up and glued itself to the glass shelf and two fresh-looking tomatoes of questionable origin. Sara stared blankly into the fridge, debating her options, until her stomach started to grumble. She finally decided and ate a tomato sandwich sitting at the kitchen island so she could look out at the lake. There was a rumble of thunder outside. The storm had followed them back from Atlanta.

Sara noticed the row of plates and glasses sitting in the strainer by the sink where Jeffrey had washed them, and for some silly reason tears came into her eyes. No amount of flowers or pretty compliments could ever measure up to a man who did housework.

“Oh, me,” Sara laughed at herself, wiping her eyes, thinking that sleep deprivation and stress were turning her into a basket case.

She was considering taking a long shower and washing off the day’s filth when a sharp knock came at the front door. Sara groaned as she stood, assuming that a well-meaning neighbor was dropping by to get the latest news on Tessa. For a split second she thought about pretending she was not home, but the slim chance of the neighbor’s having brought a nice casserole or at least some cake compelled her to answer the door.

“Devon,” she said, surprised to see Tessa’s boyfriend standing on her front porch.

“Hey,” he returned, tucking his hands into his pockets. There was a duffel bag at his feet. “What’s the cop for?”

Sara waved at Brad, who’d been parked across the street since she got home. “Long story,” she told him, not wanting to bring up Jeffrey’s fears.

Devon rested his foot on the duffel bag. “Sara, I—”

“What?” she asked, her heart jumping in her chest as she realized that something must have happened to Tessa. “Is she . . . ?”

“No,” Devon assured her, holding out his hands like he might need to catch her if she fainted. “No, I’m sorry. I should have said. She’s fine. I just came back to—”

Sara put her hand to her heart. “My God, you scared me to death.” She waved him in. “Do you want something to eat? I’ve only got—” She stopped because he did not follow.

“Sara,” Devon began, and then he looked down at the bag. “I got Tessa’s things for you. Some things she said she wanted.”

Sara leaned up against the open door, a tingling sensation tickling the hairs on the back of her neck. She knew why he was here, what the bag was for. He was leaving Tessa.

She said, “You can’t do this to her, Devon. Not now.”

“She told me to go,” he said.

Sara did not doubt that Tessa had done this, just as she did not doubt that Tessa meant the exact opposite.

“It’s the only thing she’s said to me in two days.” Tears slid down his cheeks. “ ‘Leave,’ just like that. ‘Leave.’ ”

“Devon—”

“I can’t stay up there, Sara. I can’t see her like this.”

“Wait a couple of weeks at least,” she said, aware she was begging. No matter what Tessa had told him, Devon’s leaving at this point would be devastating.

“I’ve gotta go,” he said, picking up the bag and tossing it into the foyer.

“Wait,” Sara said, trying to reason with him. “She only told you to go to make sure you wanted to stay.”

“I’m just so tired.” He looked over her shoulder, staring blankly down the hall. “I should have my baby right now. I should be taking pictures and passing out cigars.”

“Everyone’s tired,” she told him, thinking she did not have the strength to do this. “Give it some time, Devon.”

“You know, you guys are so together. You’re up there rallying around and being there for her, and that’s great, but—” He stopped, shaking his head. “I don’t belong up there. It’s like y’all’re a wall around her. This thick, impenetrable wall that’s protecting her, making her stronger.” He stopped again, looking straight at Sara. “I’m not a part of that. I’m never gonna be a part of that.”

“You are,” she insisted.

“You really think that?”

“Of course I do,” Sara told him. “Devon, you’ve been at every Sunday dinner for the last two years. Tessa adores you. Mama and Daddy treat you like you’re their son.”

Devon asked, “Did she tell you about the abortion?”

Sara did not know what to say. Tessa had considered having an abortion when she found out she was pregnant, but it had been her choice to keep the child and start a family with Devon.

“Yeah,” he said, reading her expression. “I thought so.”

“She was confused.”

“And you were just moving back from Atlanta,” he said. “And she had already broken up with the guy.”

Sara had no idea what he was talking about.

“God punishes people,” Devon said. “He punishes people when they don’t do right by Him.”

She said, “Devon, don’t say that,” but her mind was reeling. Tessa had never told Sara anything about an abortion. Sara reached for his hand, saying, “Come inside. You’re not making sense.”

“She could’ve dropped out of college,” he said, staying on the porch. “Hell, Sara, you don’t need a bachelor’s degree to be a plumber. She could have moved back here and raised the kid on her own. It’s not like your folks would have disowned her.”

“Devon . . . please.”

“Don’t make excuses for her,” he said. “We all live with the consequences of our actions.” He gave her a rueful look. “And sometimes other people have to live with them, too.”

Devon turned around as Jeffrey’s car pulled into the driveway. Sara could see that Devon had parked his van in the street, as though he wanted to make a fast getaway.

“I’ll see you around,” Devon said, tossing her a wave, like this meant nothing to him.

“Devon,” Sara called, walking after him. She followed him into the yard but stopped when he started to jog toward his van. She would not chase him. Sara owed that much to Tessa.

Jeffrey walked up to her, watching Devon leave. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she said, but she did. Why had Tessa never told her about the abortion? Had she been feeling guilty all these years, or had Sara just been too involved in her own life at the time to notice what her sister was going through?

Jeffrey led her back to the house, asking, “Did you eat dinner yet?”

She nodded, leaning into him, wishing he could make the last three days go away. She was exhausted, and her heart ached for Tessa, knowing that the abortion was one more time when Sara had not been there for her sister.

“I’m so . . .” She searched for a word, but nothing came to mind that could describe how she felt. Every last bit of life had been drained out of her.

He guided her up the front steps, saying, “You need some sleep.”

“No.” She stopped him. “I need to go to the morgue.”

“Not tonight,” he told her, kicking the duffel bag out of the way.

“I have to—”

“You have to sleep,” he told her. “You can’t even see straight.”

She knew he was right, and Sara relented. “I need to take a bath first,” she said, thinking of everything she had done at the morgue. “I feel so . . .”

“It’s all right,” he said, kissing the top of her head.

Jeffrey led her to the bathroom, and Sara stood motionless as he undressed her, then himself. She watched silently as he turned on the water, checking the temperature before helping her into the shower. When he touched her, she felt a familiar reaction, but sex seemed to be the last thing on his mind as he held a washcloth under the stream of warm water.

She stood motionless in the shower, letting him do all the work, relishing the fact that someone else was in charge. Part of Sara felt like she was waking up from a horrible dream, and there was something so restorative about his touch that she started to cry.

Jeffrey noticed the change. “You okay?”

Sara felt overwhelmed with such need that she could not respond to his question. Instead she leaned back, pressing into him, willing Jeffrey to understand how much she needed him. He hesitated, so she moved his hand slowly up her body, cupping her breast, feeling the muscles in his hand flex as his fingers teased out all the right sensations. His other hand cupped her below, and Sara gasped at how good it felt to have part of him inside her. She felt greedy, wanting all of him, but Jeffrey kept the pace slow and sensual, taking his time, touching every part of her with deliberate intention. When Jeffrey finally pressed her back into the cold tiles of the shower, Sara felt alive again, as if she had been in the desert for days and just now found her oasis.