A Faint Cold Fear

13

Sara pulled up outside the Heartsdale Medical Center, parking beside Jeffrey’s car in the parking lot. He hadn’t given her any information other than that he needed her at the hospital to take some physical evidence from two suspects. He wouldn’t say their names over the phone, but Sara had been privy to his thought processes long enough to know he meant Ethan White and Lena.

As usual, the emergency room was empty. Sara glanced around, looking for the nurse on duty, but the woman must have been on a break. Down the hall she could see Jeffrey talking to an older man of average height and thick build. Beyond them Brad Stephens stood in front of a closed exam-room door, his hand resting on the butt of his gun.

Sara could hear the man talking to Jeffrey as she got closer, his tone of voice shrill and demanding. “My wife has been through too much already.”

“I know what she’s been through,” Jeffrey said. “I’m glad to see you’re concerned for her well-being.”

“Of course I am,” the man snapped. “What are you trying to imply?”

Jeffrey noticed Sara and motioned for her to come over. “This is Sara Linton,” he told the man. “She’ll do the physical exam.”

“Dr. Brian Keller,” the man said, barely glancing at Sara. He held a woman’s purse at his side, which she guessed belonged to his wife.

“Dr. Keller is Jill Rosen’s husband,” Jeffrey explained. “Lena asked me to call her.”

Sara tried not to register her surprise.

Jeffrey told Keller, “If you’ll excuse us,” and then led Sara back up the hall to a small exam room.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “I told Mama I’d be in Atlanta this afternoon.”

He closed the door before saying, “Chuck’s throat was slit.”

“Chuck Gaines?” she said, as if there were another Chuck it could be.

“We’ve got Lena’s prints on the murder weapon.”

Sara reeled for a moment, trying to understand what he was saying.

He asked, “Did you remember the rape kit?”

For a moment Sara didn’t know what he meant.

“When we were talking about the DNA on the underwear. Did you remember the rape kit we did on Lena?”

She tried to think of the best way to answer him but knew that this was too black-and-white to say anything but “Yes.”

Jeffrey’s face was a study in anger. “Why didn’t you tell me, Sara?”

“Because it’s not right,” she said. “It’s not right to use that against her.”

“You tell that to Albert Gaines,” Jeffrey said. “You tell that to Chuck’s mama.”

Sara kept her mouth closed, because she still could not accept that Lena was in any way connected to the crimes.

“I want you to do White first,” Jeffrey said, his tone still sharp. “Blood, saliva, hair. Full-body comb. Just like an autopsy.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Anything that ties him to the crime scene,” Jeffrey said. “We’ve already got Lena’s shoe prints in blood.” He shook his head. “Blood was everywhere.”

Jeffrey opened the door and looked down the corridor. He did not leave, so Sara knew he had more to tell her.

She asked, “What?”

The anger in his tone went down a notch. “She’s messed up pretty bad.”

“How bad?”

Jeffrey looked down the hall again, then back to Sara. “I don’t know if there was a struggle or what. Maybe Chuck attacked her and she defended herself. Maybe White went nuts.”

“Is that what she’s saying?”

“She’s not saying anything. Neither of them is.” He paused. “Well, White’s saying they were together in her apartment all night, but people at the school say White left the lab after Lena did.” He indicated the hall. “Brian Keller was actually one of the last people to see her.”

“Lena asked for his wife?”

“Yeah,” Jeffrey said. “I’ve got Frank listening in the other room in case she says anything.”

“Jeffrey—”

“Don’t give me a lecture about doctors and patients, Sara. I’ve got too many dead people stacking up.”

Sara knew that arguing the point would only waste time. “Is Lena all right?”

“She can wait,” he told her, obviously meaning to cut off further questions.

“Do you have a warrant for this?”

“What are you, a lawyer now?” He didn’t let her answer. “Judge Bennett signed off on it this morning.” When she didn’t respond, he said, “What? You want to see it? You don’t trust me to tell you the truth anymore?”

“I didn’t ask—”

“No, here.” He took the warrant out of his pocket and slammed it down on the counter. “See how that goes, Sara? I tell you the truth about things. I try to help you do your job the right way so that more people don’t get hurt.”

She stared at the document, seeing Billie Bennett’s tight signature across the line. “Let’s get this over with.”

Jeffrey stepped back so she could leave, and Sara felt a sense of dread welling up into her like nothing she’d felt in a long while.

Brian Keller was still standing in the hall, holding his wife’s purse. He stared blankly as Sara walked by, and he looked so harmless that she had to remind herself that he beat his wife.

Brad tipped his hat to Sara before opening the door, saying, “Ma’am.”

Ethan White stood in the middle of the room. He was dressed in a light green hospital gown, his muscular arms crossed over his chest. He’d been hit in the nose recently, and dried blood traced a thin line down to his mouth. A large red spot under his eye was slowly turning into a bruise. There were intricate tattoos of battle scenes on what she could see of both arms. His bare calves had geometric designs and flames climbing up the sides.

He looked like an average kid with close-cropped hair and a body that revealed he spent too much free time in the gym. Muscles pulsed across his shoulders, straining the material of the hospital gown. He was a small person, a good six inches shorter than Sara, but there was something about him that filled the space around him. White seemed angry, like at any moment he would spring up and attack her. Sara was glad that Jeffrey had not left them alone in the room.

“Ethan White,” Jeffrey said. “This is Dr. Linton. She’s going to take samples ordered by the court.”

White’s jaw was clenched so tight his words came out with a slur. “I want to see the order.”

Sara put on a pair of gloves as White read the warrant. Glass slides and a DNA-testing kit were on the counter, along with a black plastic comb and tubes for drawing blood. Jeffrey had probably arranged for the nurse to have all these things ready, but Sara was curious as to why he had not asked the woman to stay and help. She wondered what he did not want anyone else to see.

Sara slipped on her glasses, thinking she would ask Jeffrey to send in a nurse.

Before she could say anything, Jeffrey told White, “Take off the gown.”

“That’s not—” Sara stopped midsentence. White dropped the gown to the floor. There was a large swastika tattooed on his belly. On his right upper chest, there was a faded likeness of Hitler. A row of SS soldiers on his left chest saluted the image on the other side.

Sara could not bring herself to do anything but stare.

White snarled, “You like what you see?”

Jeffrey’s hand slammed into the boy’s face, pushing him into the wall. Sara jumped back until she was pressed against the counter. She saw Ethan’s nose move, fresh blood dripping down into his mouth.

Jeffrey spoke in a low, angry tone that Sara hoped she would never hear again. “That’s my wife, you motherless fuck. You understand me?”

White’s head was clamped between Jeffrey’s hand and the wall. He nodded once, but there was no fear in his eyes. He was like a caged animal who knew one day soon he would find a way out.

“That’s better,” Jeffrey said, backing off.

White looked at Sara. “You’re a witness, aren’t you, Doctor? Police brutality.”

Jeffrey said, “She didn’t see anything,” and Sara cursed him for including her in this.

“Didn’t she?” White asked.

Jeffrey took a step toward him, saying, “Don’t give me a reason to hurt you.”

White gave a surly, “Yes, sir.” He wiped the blood from his nose with the back of his hand, keeping his eyes locked on Sara. He was trying to intimidate her, and she hoped he could not see that it was working.

Sara opened the oral-DNA kit. She walked over to White with the scraper in her hand, saying, “Open your mouth, please.”

He did as he was told, opening wide so she could scrape for loose skin. She took several swabs, but her hands were shaking when she started to prepare the slides. Sara took a deep breath, trying to reconcile herself to the task ahead of her. Ethan White was just another patient. She was a doctor doing her job, nothing more, nothing less.

She could feel his eyes boring into her back as she labeled the specimens. Hate filled the room like a noxious gas.

She said, “I need your date of birth.”

He paused a second, as if he was telling her of his own free will. “November twenty-first, 1980.”

Sara recorded the information on the label along with his name, her name, the location, the date, and the time. Each piece of evidence would have to be cataloged this way, then either stored in a paper evidence bag or collected onto a slide.

She picked up a sterile paper wafer with a pair of tweezers and held it in front of his mouth. “I need you to moisten this with your saliva.”

“I’m not a secretor.”

Sara kept the tweezers steady until he finally stuck out his tongue so she could place the paper in his mouth. After an appropriate amount of time, she removed the wafer and logged it into evidence.

She followed procedure, asking, “Would you like some water?”

“No.”

She continued through the preliminaries, feeling his eyes watch every move she made. Even when she was standing at the counter with her back to him, Sara could feel Ethan’s eyes fixed on her like a tiger preparing to attack.

Her throat closed when she realized she could no longer postpone actually touching him. His skin was warm under her gloves, the muscles tense and unrelenting. Sara had not drawn blood from a living patient in years, and she kept missing the vein.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized after the second try.

“No big deal,” he said, his polite tone contrary to the hateful look in his eyes.

Using a thirty-five-millimeter camera, Sara documented what looked like defensive wounds on his left forearm. Four superficial scratches were on his neck and head and there was a crescent-shaped indentation, probably from a fingernail, behind his left ear. The area around his genitals was bruised, the glans red and irritated. A short fingernail scratch went down his left buttock, a longer one up the small of his back. Sara had Jeffrey hold a scale close to the injuries while she photographed each of them with the macro lens.

She said, “I need you to lie down on the table.”

Ethan did as he was told, watching her closely.

Sara went to the counter, turning away from him. She unfolded a small white sheet of paper and turned back around again, saying, “Lift up so I can put this underneath you.”

Again he did as he was told, his eyes never leaving her face.

Several foreign hairs raked out when she combed his pubic hair. The root strands were still attached to the shafts, indicating that the hairs had been torn from the body. With a sharp pair of scissors, she cut out a matted area of hair on his inner thigh, dropping it into an envelope and labeling it with the appropriate information.

She used a wet swab to obtain samples of dried fluids on his penis and scrotum, her jaw clenching so tight that her teeth ached. She scraped his fingernails and toenails, photographing a broken nail on his right index finger. By the time she was finished with the exam, the counter was filled with evidence. Everything was either cool-air-drying in the swab dryer or collected into paper evidence bags, which Sara had sealed and labeled with a now steady hand.

“That’s it,” she said, taking off her gloves and dropping them on the counter. She left the room as quickly as she could without running. Brad and Keller were still in the hallway, but she passed by them both without saying a word.

Sara went back to the empty exam room, fear and anger surging through every inch of her body. She leaned down to the sink, turning on the faucet full blast so she could splash cold water in her face. Bile stuck in her throat, and she gulped water, willing herself not to be sick. She could still feel Ethan’s eyes following her, searing into her flesh like a branding iron. She could smell the soap he used, and, when she closed her eyes, Sara could see the slight erection he had gotten when she swabbed his penis and combed his pubic hair.

The faucet was still running, and Sara turned off the water. She was drying her hands with a paper towel when she suddenly realized that she was standing in the same room she had used to perform Lena’s rape kit last year. This was the table Lena had lain on. This was the same counter she had filled with Lena’s evidence, much as she had just done with Ethan White’s.

Sara wrapped her arms around her waist, staring at the room, trying not to let the memories swallow her.

After several minutes Jeffrey knocked on the door and let himself in. He had taken off his coat, and she could see his gun in its holster.

“You could have warned me,” she said, her voice catching. “You could have told me.”

“I know.”

“Is this how you pay me back?” she said, aware that she was going to start either crying or yelling.

“It wasn’t payback,” he said, and she did not know if she believed him or not.

Sara put her hand to her mouth, trying to suppress a sob. “Jesus Christ, Jeff.”

“I know.”

“You don’t know,” she said, her voice loud in the room. “My God, did you see those tattoos?” Sara did not let him answer. “He’s got a swastika—” She could not continue. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

Jeffrey was silent. Then, “I wanted you to see,” he said. “I wanted you to know what we’re dealing with.”

“You couldn’t tell me?” she demanded, turning on the faucet again. She scooped water into her hand so she could wash the bad taste out of her mouth. “What took you so long?” she asked, remembering the way he had pounded Ethan’s head back into the wall. “Did you hit him again?”

“I didn’t hit him in the first place.”

“You didn’t hit him in the eye?” she demanded. “His nose was bleeding, Jeffrey. The blood was fresh.”

“I told you, I didn’t hit him.”

She grabbed his hands, checking his knuckles for cuts or bruises. They were clean, but she still asked, “Where’s your class ring?”

“I took it off.”

“You never take that ring off.”

“Sunday,” he said. “I took it off Sunday before I talked to your folks.”

“Why?”

He relented angrily, “There was blood, Sara. Okay? There was blood from Tess.”

Sara dropped his hand. She asked the question she would not let herself think when she was in the same room with White. “Do you think he could have stabbed Tessa?”

“He doesn’t have an alibi for Sunday. Not a good one.”

“Where was he?”

“He says in the library,” Jeffrey answered. “No one remembers him. He could have been in the woods. He could have killed Andy, then waited around in the woods to see what was going on.”

Sara nodded that he should continue.

“He wasn’t waiting for Tessa, Sara. She just came along, and he took advantage of the situation.”

Sara gripped the counter again, closing her eyes, trying to reconcile the man in the next room with Tessa’s stabbing. Sara had been in the presence of a murderer before, and what had struck her about that man was that he was so normal, so ordinary. With his clothes on, Ethan White had seemed the same way. He could be just another kid on campus. He could have been one of her patients. Somewhere, back in his hometown, there could be a pediatrician just like Sara who watched Ethan White grow into a man.

When she could speak, she asked, “Where does Lena fit into all of this?”

“She’s seeing him,” Jeffrey said. “She’s his girlfriend.”

“I can’t believe . . .”

“When you see her,” Jeffrey began, “when you see her, Sara, I want you to remember that she’s involved with White. She’s protecting him.” He pointed at the wall, indicating the next exam room. “That thing you saw in there, that animal—she’s protecting him.”

“Protecting him from what?” Sara asked. “It’s her fingerprints on the knife. She’s the one who worked with Chuck.”

“You’ll understand when you see her.”

“Is this another surprise?” she asked, thinking she could not handle another one, especially if it had anything to do with Lena. “Does she have a swastika, too?”

“Honestly,” Jeffrey began, “I don’t know what to make of her. She looks bad. Bad like she’s been hurt.”

“Has she been?”

“I don’t know,” he repeated. “Somebody worked her over.”

“Who?”

“Frank thinks Chuck did something.”

“Did what?” Sara asked, dreading what he might say.

“Attacked her,” Jeffrey said. “Or maybe he just pissed her off. She told White, and White went ballistic.”

“What do you think happened?” Sara asked.

“Honestly, who the hell knows?” he said. “And she’s not telling me anything.”

“Did you ask her the same way you asked White?” she said. “With your hand pressed into her face?”

The hurt in his eyes made her wish she could take back her words, but Sara knew that would accomplish nothing. She still wanted an answer to her question.

He asked her, “What kind of person do you think I am?”

“I think . . . ,” Sara began, not knowing what to say, “I think we both have jobs to do. I think we can’t talk about this right now.”

“I want to talk about it,” he said. “I need you with me on this, Sara. I can’t fight you and everybody else at the same time.”

“Now isn’t the time,” she told him. “Where’s Lena?”

Jeffrey stepped back into the hall, indicating that she should see for herself.

Sara dried her hands on her pants as she walked past Brad toward the next room. She reached down to open the door just as Frank was coming out.

“Hey,” Frank said, looking somewhere past her shoulder. “She wanted some water.”

Sara walked into the room. The first thing she saw was not Lena but the rape kit that had been left on the counter. Sara froze, unable to move until Jeffrey put his hand to her back and gently pushed. She wanted to rail against him, to pound her fists into his chest and damn him for making her do this again, but all the spirit had been drained out of her. She felt completely empty of everything but sorrow.

Jeffrey said, “Sara Linton, this is Jill Rosen.”

A small woman dressed in black stood with her back against the wall. She said something, but all Sara heard was a clicking of metal against metal. Lena was sitting on the bed, her feet hanging over the side. She was dressed in a green hospital gown with a ribbon at the neck. She was moving her hand back and forth in what looked like a nervous twitch, and the handcuff around her wrist was clicking on the bar at the foot of the bed.

Sara bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. She said, “Get those handcuffs off her right now.”

Jeffrey hesitated but did as she instructed.

When he had removed the cuffs, she told him, “Get out,” in a voice that invited no discussion.

Again he hesitated. She looked him right in the eye and crisply enunciated the two words. “Get. Out.”

Jeffrey left, the door snicking closed behind him. Sara stood with her hands on her hips, a few feet away from Lena. Though the handcuffs were off, Lena’s hand continued to move back and forth as if in a palsy. Sara had thought Jeffrey’s leaving would make the room feel less small, but the walls were still closing in on her. There was a palpable fear in the room, and Sara felt a sudden coldness overwhelm her.

Sara asked, “Who did this to you?”

Lena cleared her throat, staring at the floor. When she tried to speak, her voice was barely more than a whisper. “I fell.”

Sara put her hand to her chest. “Lena,” she said, “you’ve been raped.”

“I fell,” Lena repeated, her hand still shaking.

Jill Rosen crossed the room and wet a paper towel at the sink. She walked back to Lena, patting the towel to her face and neck.

Sara asked, “Did Ethan do this to you?”

Lena shook her head as Rosen tried to wipe away some of the blood.

She said, “Ethan didn’t do anything.”

Rosen placed the towel on the back of Lena’s neck. She might have been wiping away evidence, but Sara did not care.

“Lena,” Sara said, “it’s okay. He’s not going to hurt you anymore.”

Lena closed her eyes, but she let Rosen wipe under her chin. “He didn’t hurt me.”

“This is not your fault,” Sara said. “You don’t have to protect him.”

Lena kept her eyes closed.

“Did Chuck do this?” Sara asked. Rosen looked up, startled.

Sara repeated, “Was it Chuck?”

Lena whispered, “I haven’t seen Chuck.”

Sara sat on the edge of the bed, wanting to understand. “Lena, please.”

Lena turned her head away. The gown slipped, and Sara could see a deep bite mark just above her right breast.

Rosen finally spoke. “Did Chuck hurt you?”

“I shouldn’t have called you,” Lena told the other woman.

Rosen’s eyes watered as she tucked Lena’s hair behind her ear. She was probably seeing herself twenty years ago.

Lena told her, “Please go.”

Rosen looked at Sara as if she didn’t quite trust her. “You have the right to have someone here,” Rosen said. Working on campus, the woman must have gotten calls like this before. She knew the system, even if she never used it for herself.

“Please go,” Lena repeated, her eyes still closed, as if she could will the woman away.

Rosen opened her mouth to say something more but seemed to decide against it. She left the room quickly, like a prisoner escaping.

Lena’s eyes remained closed. Her throat worked, and she coughed.

“It sounds like your trachea is bruised,” Sara told her. “If your larynx is damaged—” Sara stopped, wondering if Lena was even listening. Her eyes were closed so tightly it looked as if she wanted to shut out the world.

“Lena,” Sara said, her mind going back to the forest with Tessa, “are you having any trouble breathing?”

Almost imperceptibly, Lena shook her head once in a tight no.

“Do you mind if I feel?” Sara asked, but she did not wait for an answer. As gently as she could, Sara tested the skin around Lena’s larynx for pockets of air. “It’s just bruised,” she said. “It’s not fractured, but it’ll hurt for a while.”

Lena coughed again, and Sara got her a glass of water.

“Slowly,” Sara told her, tilting down the bottom of the glass.

She coughed again, looking around the room like she could not remember how she had gotten here.

“You’re at the hospital,” Sara said. “Did Chuck hurt you and Ethan found out? Is that what happened, Lena?”

She swallowed, wincing from the pain. “I fell.”

“Lena,” Sara breathed, feeling such deep sadness that she could barely talk. “My God, please, just tell me what happened.”

Lena kept her head down, mumbling something.

Sara asked, “What?”

She cleared her throat, finally opening her eyes. The blood vessels were broken, tiny red dots scattered in the whites.

She said, “I want to take a shower.”

Sara looked at the rape kit on the counter. She did not think she could do this again. It was too much for one person to handle. The way Lena just sat there, helpless, waiting for Sara to do whatever she had to do, broke her heart.

Lena must have sensed her trepidation. “Please just get this over with,” she whispered. “I feel so dirty. I have to take a shower.”

Sara made herself slide off the bed and walk over to the counter. She felt numb when she checked to make sure there was film in the camera.

Following procedure, Sara asked, “Have you had consensual sex with anyone in the last twenty-four hours?”

Lena nodded. “Yes.”

Sara closed her eyes. “Consensual sex?” she repeated.

“Yes.”

Sara tried to keep her tone steady. “Have you douched or showered since the attack?”

“I wasn’t attacked.”

Sara walked over, standing in front of Lena. “There’s a pill I can give you,” she said. “Like the one I gave you before.”

Lena’s hand still shook, rubbing against the sheet on the bed.

“It’s for emergency contraception.”

Lena moved her lips without speaking.

“It’s also called a morning-after pill. Do you remember how it works?”

Lena nodded, but Sara told her anyway.

“You’ll need to take one now and another one in twelve hours. I’ll give you something for the nausea. Was the nausea bad last time?”

Lena might have nodded, but Sara was not certain.

“You might have cramping, dizziness, spotting.”

Lena stopped her. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Sara asked.

“Okay,” she repeated. “Yes. Give me the pills.”

Sara sat at her desk in the morgue, her head in her hands, the telephone cradled between her ear and shoulder as she listened to her father’s cell phone ring.

“Sara?” Cathy answered, concern straining her voice. “Where are you?”

“Didn’t you get my message?”

“We don’t know how to check that,” her mother said, as if it were obvious. “We were starting to get worried.”

“I’m sorry, Mama,” Sara said, looking at the clock out in the morgue. Her parents had been expecting her to call an hour ago. “Chuck Gaines has been killed.”

Cathy was too shocked to be worried anymore. “The boy who ate your macaroni project in the third grade?”

“Yes,” Sara answered. Her mother always remembered people from Sara’s childhood by something stupid they had done as kids.

Cathy said, “Well, how horrible,” not making the connection that Chuck’s death could somehow be related to Tessa’s stabbing.

“I’ve got to do the autopsy, and there are some other things.” Sara did not want to tell her mother about Lena Adams or anything else that had happened at the hospital. Even if she tried, Sara did not think she could articulate her feelings. She felt raw and exposed and wanted nothing more than to be with her family right now.

“Can you come in the morning?” Cathy asked, a strange tone to her voice.

“I’m going to come tonight as soon as I can,” Sara said, thinking she had never wanted to leave town more than she did right now. “Is Tess okay?”

“She’s right here,” Cathy said. “Talking to Devon.”

“Well,” Sara said. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“Probably first one,” Cathy answered cryptically.

“How about Daddy?”

Cathy paused before answering. “He’s okay,” she said, in a way that was far from convincing.

Sara tried to hold back her tears. She felt like she was barely treading water as it was. The added strain of worrying about her relationship with her father was going to pull her under.

“Baby?” Cathy asked.

Sara saw Jeffrey by the shadow that fell over her desk. She looked up, but not at him. Through the window she saw Frank and Carlos talking by the body.

Sara said, “Jeff’s here, Mama. I need to get started.”

Cathy still sounded concerned, but she said, “All right.”

“I’ll come as soon as I can,” Sara told her, then hung up.

Jeffrey asked, “Is something wrong with Tess?”

“I just need to see her,” Sara said. “I need to be with my family.”

Jeffrey got the implication that this did not include him. “Are we going to talk about this now?”

“You handcuffed her,” Sara said, torn between hurt and outrage. “I can’t believe you handcuffed her.”

“She’s a suspect, Sara.” He looked back over his shoulder. Frank was staring at his notebook, but Sara knew he could hear every word they said. Still, she raised her voice just to make sure.

“She was raped, Jeffrey. I don’t know by whom, but she was raped, and you shouldn’t have handcuffed her.”

“She’s part of a murder investigation.”

“She wasn’t going anywhere in that room.”

“That wasn’t the point.”

“What was the point?” she demanded, still trying to keep her voice low. “To torture her? To make her break?”

“That’s what I do, Sara. I get people to confess.”

“I’m sure you get them to say a lot of things just to stop you from hitting them.”

“Let me tell you something, Sara, a guy like Ethan White responds to one thing.”

“Oh, did I miss the part where he told you what you wanted to know?”

Jeffrey stared at her, clearly trying not to yell. He finally asked, “Can’t we just go back to how things were this morning?”

“This morning you hadn’t handcuffed a rape victim to a hospital bed.”

“I’m not the one that withheld evidence from you.”

“That’s not withholding evidence, you ass. That’s protecting a patient. How would you like it if someone used my rape kit to frame me?”

“Frame you?” he echoed. “Her fingerprints are on the murder weapon. She looks like somebody beat the shit out of her. Her boyfriend has a criminal record as long as my dick. What the hell else am I supposed to think?” He made a visible effort to check his temper. “I can’t dictate my job by what pleases you.”

“No,” she said, standing. “Or by common decency either.”

“I didn’t know—”

“Don’t be stupid,” she hissed, slamming the door closed. She had stopped wanting Frank to hear. “You saw what she looked like, what he did to her. You must have the pictures now. Did you see the lacerations on her legs? Did you see the bite marks on her breast?”

“Yes,” he told he. “I saw the pictures. I saw them.” He shook his head as though he wished he had not.

“Do you really think Lena killed Chuck?”

“Nothing ties White to the scene,” he told her. “Give me something that ties him to the scene. Give me something other than her bloody fingerprints on the murder weapon.”

Sara could not get past one point. “You shouldn’t have handcuffed her.”

“Am I supposed to ignore the fact that she might have killed somebody just because I feel sorry for her?”

“Do you?”

“Of course I do,” he told her. “Do you think I like seeing her like that? Jesus Christ.”

“It could have been self-defense.”

“That’s for her lawyer to decide,” Jeffrey said, and though his tone was harsh, Sara knew that he was right. “I can’t let how I feel about her interfere with my job, and neither should you.”

“I guess I’m just not as professional as you are.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Eighty percent of all women who are raped experience a second attack at some point in their lives,” she told him. “Did you know that?”

His silence answered her question.

“Instead of charging her with murder, you should be looking for someone to charge with rape.”

Jeffrey held his hands up in a shrug. “Didn’t you hear?” he asked, so glib that she wanted to smack him. “She wasn’t raped. She fell.”

Sara threw open the door, knowing she could not talk to him anymore. As she walked into the morgue, she could feel Jeffrey staring at her, but she did not care. No matter what the autopsy revealed, she would never be able to forgive Jeffrey for handcuffing Lena to the bed. The way she was feeling now, Sara could not care less if she never talked to him again.

She walked over to the X rays, not really seeing the films. Sara concentrated on her breathing, trying to make her mind focus on the task at hand. She closed her eyes, pushing Tessa and Lena from her mind, banishing Ethan White from her memory. When she thought that she had recovered, she opened her eyes and walked back to the table.

Chuck Gaines was a large man with broad shoulders and a smattering of hair on his chest. There were no defensive wounds on his arms that Sara could see, so he must have been taken by surprise. His neck was splayed open, bright red, with arteries and tendons hanging out like twigs on a vine. She could see clear through to his cervical spine, a piece of which had become dislodged from its normal place.

“I black-lighted him earlier,” Sara said. A black light could pick up body fluids and show if there had been recent sexual activity. “He’s clean.”

Jeffrey countered, “He could’ve worn a condom.”

“Did you find one at the scene?”

“Lena would know to take that away.”

Sara jerked down the overhead light, making her irritation apparent. She concentrated the light so she could better see the area around the wound. “There’s one hesitation mark,” she said, indicating the cut that had not gone all the way through. Whoever had stabbed Chuck had needed at least one try before he or she broke skin.

“So,” Jeffrey surmised, “it wasn’t a strong person.”

“It took a lot of strength to cut through the cartilage and bone,” Sara countered, wishing he would not editorialize but not wanting to call him on it in front of Frank. Jeffrey had probably brought Frank along for just this reason.

She asked, “Do you have the weapon?”

Jeffrey held up a plastic evidence bag that contained a bloody six-inch-long hunting knife. He said, “The empty sheath was in her bedroom. The knife fits perfectly.”

“You didn’t look for anything else?”

Jeffrey took the dig in stride. “We tossed her room and White’s. This was the only weapon.” He added, “Of any kind.”

Sara studied the knife. The blade was serrated on one side and sharp on the other. There was black fingerprint powder on the handle, and she could see the faint outline of the bloody print they had removed with tape. Other than that, there was not much blood on the weapon. Either the murderer had cleaned it off or Jeffrey had the wrong knife. Sara could make an educated guess at to which was the case, but she wanted to be sure before she said anything definitive.

Sara put on two pairs of gloves. The only other mark on the body was a penetrating stab wound high on the left chest. The opening was big enough for the blade Jeffrey had shown her, but the edges did not account for the serration. Chuck’s attacker had probably slashed him across the neck, then stabbed him in the chest. The chest wound was at an angle, indicating that the person doing the stabbing was standing over the body when it had been delivered.

Jeffrey asked, “Wasn’t that where Tess was stabbed?”

Sara ignored the question. “Can you help me roll him to his side?”

Jeffrey went to get a pair of gloves off the wall dispenser.

Frank offered, “You need me to help, too?”

“No,” Sara told him. “Thanks.”

Frank patted his chest, looking visibly relieved. Sara could see that the skin on the back of his knuckles was cut and bruised. He saw her notice and tucked his hand into his pocket with an apologetic smile.

Jeffrey said, “Ready?”

Sara nodded, waiting for him to get into place.

As Chuck’s head had been nearly separated from his neck, moving him was an awkward job. Compounding the problem, the body was still stiff. The legs slid toward the edge of the table, and Sara had to move quickly to keep the body from rolling onto the floor.

Jeffrey said, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she told him, feeling some of her earlier anger slipping away. She pointed to the tray. “Can you hand me that scalpel?”

Jeffrey knew that this was not routine. He asked, “What are you looking for?”

Sara estimated the trajectory of the blade before making a small incision in Chuck’s back just below the left shoulder.

“The knife was the only weapon you found?” Sara asked him to clarify, pointing to another instrument on the tray.

“Yes,” Jeffrey said, handing her a pair of stainless-steel tweezers.

Sara reached into the wound with the tweezers, digging around with the point until she found what she was looking for.

Jeffrey said, “What’s going on?”

She pulled out a piece of metal as her answer.

Frank said, “What’s that?”

Jeffrey looked sick. “The tip of the knife.”

Sara added, “It broke off against his shoulder blade.”

Frank’s confusion was obvious. “Lena’s blade wasn’t broken.” He picked up the plastic bag. “The tip’s not even bent.”

Jeffrey’s face had turned completely white, and the distress in his expression made Sara regret everything she had said to him before.

Frank said, “What the hell is going on here?”

“It wasn’t her knife,” Jeffrey said, his voice thick with emotion. “It wasn’t Lena.”