Blindsighted

Chapter One

SARA Linton leaned back in her chair, mumbling a soft "Yes, Mama" into the telephone. She wondered briefly if there would ever come a point in time when she would be too old to be taken over her mother's knee.

"Yes, Mama," Sara repeated, tapping her pen on the desk. She felt heat coming off her cheeks, and an overwhelming sense of embarrassment took hold.

A soft knock came at the office door, followed by a tentative "Dr. Linton?"

Sara suppressed her relief. "I need to go," she said to her mother, who shot off one last admonishment before hanging up the phone.

Nelly Morgan slid open the door, giving Sara a hard look. As office manager for the Heartsdale Children's Clinic, Nelly was the closest thing Sara had to a secretary. Nelly had been running the place for as long as Sara could remember, even as far back as when Sara was herself a patient here.

Nelly said, "Your cheeks are on fire."

"I just got yelled at by my mother."

Nelly raised an eyebrow. "I assume with good reason."

"Well," Sara said, hoping that would end it.

"The labs on Jimmy Powell came in," Nelly said, still eyeing Sara. "And the mail," she added, dropping a stack of letters on top of the in-basket. The plastic bowed under the added weight.

Sara sighed as she read over the fax. On a good day, she diagnosed earaches and sore throats. Today, she would have to tell the parents of a twelve-year-old boy that he had acute myeloblastic leukemia.

"Not good," Nell)' guessed. She had worked at the clinic long enough to know how to read a lab report.

"No," Sara agreed, rubbing her eyes. "Not good at all." She sat back in her chair, asking, "The Powells are at Disney World, right?"

"For his birthday," Nelly said. "They should be back tonight."

Sara felt a sadness come over her. She had never gotten used to delivering this kind of news.

Nelly offered, "I can schedule them for first thing in the morning."

"Thanks," Sara answered, tucking the report into Jimmy Powell's chart. She glanced at the clock on the wall as she did this and let out an audible gasp. "Is that right?" she asked, checking the time against her watch. "I was supposed to meet Tessa at lunch fifteen minutes ago."

Nelly checked her own watch. "This late in the day? It's closer to suppertime."

"It was the only time I could make it," Sara said, gathering charts together. She bumped the in-box and papers fell onto the floor in a heap, cracking the plastic tray.

"Crap," Sara hissed.

Nelly started to help, but Sara stopped her. Aside from the fact that Sara did not like other people cleaning up her messes, if Nelly somehow managed to get down on her knees, it was doubtful she would be able to get back up without considerable assistance.

"I've got it," Sara told her, scooping up the whole pile and dropping it on her desk. "Was there anything else?"

Nelly flashed a smile. "Chief Tolliver's holding on line three."

Sara sat back on her heels, a feeling of dread washing over her. She did double duty as the town's pediatrician and coroner. Jeffrey Tolliver, her ex-husband, was the chief of police. There were only two reasons for him to be calling Sara in the middle of the day, neither of them particularly pleasant.

Sara stood and picked up the phone, giving him the benefit of the doubt. "Somebody better be dead."

Jeffreys voice was garbled, and she assumed he was using his cellular phone. "Sorry to disappoint you," he said, then, "I've been on hold for ten minutes. What if this had been an emergency?"

Sara started shoving papers into her briefcase. It was an unwritten clinic policy to make Jeffrey jump through hoops of fire before he could speak to Sara on the telephone. She was actually surprised that Nelly remembered to tell Sara he was on the phone.

"Sara?"

She glanced at the door, mumbling, "I knew I should've just left."

"What?" he asked, his voice echoing slightly on the cellular.

"I said you always send someone if it's an emergency," she lied. "Where are you?"

"At the college," he answered. "I'm waiting for the deputy dogs."

He was using their term for the campus security at Grant Tech, the state university at the center of town.

She asked, "What is it?"

"I just wanted to see how you were doing."

"Fine," she snapped, pulling the papers back out of her briefcase, wondering why she had put them there in the first place. She flipped through some charts, shoving them into the side pocket.

She said, "I'm late for lunch with Tess. What did you need?"

He seemed taken aback by her curt tone. "You just looked distracted yesterday," he said. "In church."

"I wasn't distracted," she mumbled, flipping through the mail. She stopped at the sight of a postcard, her whole body going rigid. The front of the card showed a picture of Emory University in Atlanta, Saras alma mater. Neatly typed on the back beside her address at the children's clinic were the words, "Why hast thou forsaken me?"

"Sara?"

A cold sweat came over her. "I need to go."

"Sara, I-"

She hung up the phone before Jeffrey could finish his sentence, shoving three more charts into her briefcase along with the postcard. She slipped out the side door without anyone seeing her.

Sunlight beamed down on Sara as she walked into the street. There was a chill in the air that had not been there this morning, and the dark clouds promised rain later on tonight.

A red Thunderbird passed, a small arm hanging out the window.

"Hey, Dr. Linton," a child called.

Sara waved, calling "Hey" back as she crossed the street. Sara switched the briefcase from one hand to the other as she cut across the lawn in front of the college. She took a right onto the sidewalk, heading toward Main Street, and was at the diner in less than five minutes.

Tessa was sitting in a booth on the far wall of the empty diner, eating a hamburger. She did not look pleased.

"Sorry I'm late," Sara offered, walking toward her sister. She tried a smile, but Tessa did not respond in kind.

"You said two. It's nearly two-thirty."

"I had paperwork," Sara explained, tucking her briefcase into the booth. Tessa was a plumber, like their father. While clogged drains were no laughing matter, very seldom did Linton and Daughters get the kind of emergency phone calls that Sara did on a daily basis. Her family could not grasp what a busy day was like for Sara and were constantly irritated by her lateness.

"I called the morgue at two," Tessa informed her, nibbling a french fry. "You weren't there."

Sara sat down with a groan, running her fingers through her hair. "I dropped back by the clinic and Mama called and the time got away from me." She stopped, saying what she always said. "I'm sorry. I should have called." When Tessa did not respond, Sara continued, "You can keep being mad at me for the rest of lunch or you can drop it and I'll buy you a slice of chocolate cream pie."

"Red velvet," Tessa countered.

"Deal," Sara returned, feeling an inordinate sense of relief. It was bad enough having her mother mad at her.

"Speaking of calls," Tessa began, and Sara knew where she was going even before she asked the question. "Hear from Jeffrey?"

Sara raised up, tucking her hand into her front pocket. She pulled out two five-dollar bills. "He called before I left the clinic."

Tessa barked a laugh that filled the restaurant. "What did he say?"

"I cut him off before he could say anything," Sara answered, handing her sister the money.

Tessa tucked the fives into the back pocket of her blue jeans. "So, Mama called? She was pretty pissed at you."

"I'm pretty pissed at me, too," Sara said. After being divorced for two years, she still could not let go of her ex-husband. Sara vacillated between hating Jeffrey Tolliver and hating herself because of this. She wanted just one day to go by without thinking about him, without having him in her life. Yesterday, much like today, had not been that day.

Easter Sunday was important to her mother. While Sara was not particularly religious, putting on panty hose one Sunday out of the year was a small price to pay for Cathy Linton's happiness. Sara had not planned on Jeffrey being at church. She had caught him out of the corner of her eye just after the first hymn. He was sitting three rows behind and to the right of her, and they seemed to notice each other at the same time. Sara had forced herself to look away first.

Sitting there in church, staring at the preacher without hearing a word the man was saying, Sara had felt Jeffrey's gaze on the back of her neck. There was a heat from the intensity of his stare that caused a warm flush to come over her. Despite the fact that she was sitting in church with her mother on one side of her and Tessa and her father on the other, Sara had felt her body responding to the look Jeffrey had given her. There was something about this time of year that turned her into a completely different person.

She was actually fidgeting in her seat, thinking about Jeffrey touching her, the way his hands felt on her skin, when Cathy Linton jabbed her elbow into Sara's ribs. Her mother's expression said she knew exactly what was going through Sara's mind at that moment and did not like it one bit. Cathy had crossed her arms angrily, her posture indicating she was resigning herself to the fact that Sara would go to hell for thinking about sex at the Primitive Baptist on Easter Sunday.

There was a prayer, then another hymn. After what seemed like an appropriate amount of time, Sara glanced over her shoulder to find Jeffrey again, only to see him with his head bent down to his chest as he slept. This was the problem with Jeffrey Tolliver, the idea of him was much better than the reality.

Tessa tapped her fingers on the table for Sara's attention. "Sara?" Sara put her hand to her chest, conscious that her heart was pounding the same way it had yesterday morning in church. "What?"

Tessa gave her a knowing look, but thankfully did not pursue it. "What did Jeb say?"

"What do you mean?"

"I saw you talking to him after the service," Tessa said. "What did he say?"

Sara debated whether or not to lie. Finally, she answered, "He asked me out for lunch today, but I told him I was seeing you."

"You could've cancelled."

Sara shrugged. "We're going out Wednesday night."

Tessa did everything but clap her hands together.

"God," Sara groaned. "What was I thinking?"

"Not about Jeffrey for a change," Tessa answered. "Right?"

Sara took the menu from behind the napkin holder, though she hardly needed to look at it. She or some member of her family had eaten at the Grant Filling Station at least once a week since Sara was three years old, and the only change to the menu in all that time had been when Pete Wayne, the owner, had added peanut brittle to the dessert menu in honor of then president Jimmy Carter.

Tessa reached across the table, gently pushing down the menu. "You okay?"

"It's that time of year again," Sara said, rummaging around in her briefcase. She found the postcard and held it up.

Tessa did not take the card, so Sara read aloud from the back, " 'Why hast thou forsaken me?' " She put the card down on the table between them, waiting for Tessa's response.

"From the Bible?" Tessa asked, though surely she knew.

Sara looked out the window, trying to compose herself. Suddenly, she stood up from the table, saying, "I need to go wash my hands."

"Sara?"

She waved off Tessa's concern, walking to the back of the diner, trying to hold herself together until she reached the bathroom. The door to the women's room had stuck in the frame since the beginning of time, so Sara gave the handle a hard yank. Inside, the small black-and-white-tiled bathroom was cool and almost comforting. She leaned back against the wall, hands to her face, trying to wipe out the last few hours of her day. Jimmy Powell's lab results still haunted her. Twelve years ago, while working her medical internship at Atlanta 's Grady Hospital, Sara had grown familiar with, if not accustomed to, death. Grady had the best ER in the Southeast, and Sara had seen her share of difficult traumas, from a kid who had swallowed a pack of razor blades to a teenage girl who had been given a clothes hanger abortion. These were horrible cases, but not altogether unexpected in such a large city.

Cases like Jimmy Powell's coming through the children's clinic hit Sara with the force of a wrecking ball. This would be one of the rare cases when Sara's two jobs would converge. Jimmy Powell, who liked to watch college basketball and held one of the largest collections of Hot Wheels Sara had personally ever seen, would more than likely be dead within the next year.

Sara clipped her hair back into a loose ponytail as she waited for the sink to fill with cold water. She leaned over the sink, pausing at the sickly sweet smell coming from the basin. Pete had probably dumped vinegar down the drain to keep it from smelling sour. It was an old plumber's trick, but Sara hated the smell of vinegar.

She held her breath as she leaned back over, splashing her face with water, trying to wake up. A glance back at the mirror showed nothing had improved, but a wet spot from the water was just below the neckline of her shirt.

"Great," Sara mumbled.

She dried her hands on her pants as she walked toward the stalls. After seeing the contents of the toilet, she moved to the next stall, the handicap stall, and opened the door.

"Oh," Sara breathed, stepping back quickly, only stopping when the sink basin pressed against the back of her legs. She put her hands behind her, bracing herself on the counter. A metallic taste came to her mouth, and Sara forced herself to take in gulps of air so that she wouldn't pass out. She dropped her head down, closing her eyes, counting out a full five seconds before she looked up again.

Sibyl Adams, a professor at the college, sat on the toilet. Her head was tilted back against the tiled wall, her eyes closed. Her pants were pulled down around her ankles, legs splayed wide open. She had been stabbed in the abdomen. Blood filled the toilet between her legs, dripping onto the tiled floor.

Sara forced herself to move into the stall, crouching in front of the young woman. Sibyl's shirt was pulled up, and Sara could see a large vertical cut down her abdomen, bisecting her navel and stopping at the pubic bone. Another cut, much deeper, slashed horizontally under her breasts. This was the source of most of the blood, and it still dripped in a steady stream down the body. Sara put her hand to the wound, trying to halt the bleeding, but blood seeped between her fingers as if she were squeezing a sponge.

Sara wiped her hands on the front of her shirt, then tilted Sibyl's head forward. A small moan escaped from the woman's lips, but Sara could not tell if this was a simple release of air from a corpse or the plea of a living woman. "Sibyl?" Sara whispered, barely able to manage the word. Fear sat in the back of her throat like a summer cold.

"Sibyl?" she repeated, using her thumb to press open Sibyl's eyelid. The woman's skin was hot to the touch, as if she had been out in the sun too long. A large bruise covered the right side of her face. Sara could see the impression of a fist under the eye. Bone moved under Sara's hand when she touched the bruise, clicking like two marbles rubbing together.

Sara's hand shook as she pressed her fingers against Sibyl's carotid artery. A fluttering rose against her fingertips, but Sara wasn't sure if it was the tremor in her own hands or life that she was feeling. Sara closed her eyes, concentrating, trying to separate the two sensations.

Without warning, the body jerked violently, pitching forward and slamming Sara onto the floor. Blood spread out around both of them, and Sara instinctively clawed to get out from under the convulsing woman. With her feet and hands she groped for some kind of purchase on the slick bathroom floor. Finally, Sara managed to slide out from underneath her. She turned Sibyl over, cradling her head, trying to help her through the convulsions. Suddenly, the jerking stopped. Sara put her ear to Sibyl's mouth, trying to make out breathing sounds. There were none.

Sitting up on her knees, Sara started compressions, trying to push life back into Sibyl's heart. Sara pinched the younger woman's nose, breathing air into her mouth. Sibyl's chest rose briefly, but nothing more. Sara tried again, gagging as blood coughed up into her mouth. She spit several times to clear her mouth, prepared to continue, but she could tell it was too late. Sibyl's eyes rolled back into her head and her breath hissed out with a low shudder. A trickle of urine came from between her legs.

She was dead.

Chapter Two

GRANT County was named for the good Grant, not Ulysses, but Lemuel Pratt Grant, a railroad builder who in the mid-1800s extended the Atlanta line deep into South Georgia and to the sea. It was on Grant's rails that trains carted cotton and other commodities all across Georgia. This rail line had put cities like Heartsdale, Madison, and Avondale on the map, and there were more than a few Georgia towns named after the man. At the start of the Civil War, Colonel Grant also developed a defense plan should Atlanta ever come under siege; unfortunately, he was better with railroad lines than front lines.

During the Depression, the citizens of Avondale, Heartsdale, and Madison decided to combine their police and fire departments as well as their schools. This helped economize on much needed services and helped persuade the railroads to keep the Grant line open; the county was much larger as a whole than as individual cities. In 1928, an army base was built in Madison, bringing families from all over the nation to tiny Grant County. A few years later, Avondale became a stopping point for railroad maintenance on the Atlanta-Savannah line. A few more years passed, and Grant College sprang up in Heartsdale. For nearly sixty years, the county prospered, until base closings, consolidations, and Reaganomics trickled down, crushing the economies of Madison and Avondale within three years of each other. But for the college, which in 1946 became a technological university specializing in agri-business, Heartsdale would have followed the same downward trend as its sister cities.

As it was, the college was the lifeblood of the city, and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver's first directive from Heartsdale's mayor was to keep the college happy if he wanted to keep his job. Jeffrey was doing just that, meeting with the campus police, discussing a plan of action for a recent outbreak of bicycle thefts, when his cell phone rang. At first, he did not recognize Sara's voice and thought the call was some land of prank. In the eight years he had known her, Sara had never sounded so desperate. Her voice trembled as she said three words he had never expected to come from her mouth: I need you.

Jeffrey took a left outside the college gates and drove his Lincoln Town Car up Main Street toward the diner. Spring was very early this year, and already the dogwood trees lining the street were blooming, weaving a white curtain over the road. The women from the garden club had planted tulips in little planters lining the sidewalks, and a couple of kids from the high school were out sweeping the street instead of spending a week in afterschool detention. The owner of the dress shop had put a rack of clothes on the sidewalk, and the hardware store had set up an outdoor gazebo display complete with porch swing. Jeffrey knew the scene would be a sharp contrast to the one waiting for him at the diner.

He rolled down the window, letting fresh air into the stuffy car. His tie felt tight against his throat, and he found himself taking it off without thinking. In his mind, he kept playing Sara's phone call over and over in his head, trying to get more from it than the obvious facts. Sibyl Adams had been stabbed and killed at the diner.

Twenty years as a cop had not prepared Jeffrey for this kind of news. Half of his career had been spent in Birmingham, Alabama, where murder seldom surprised. Not a week went by when he wasn't called out to investigate at least one homicide, usually a product of Birmingham 's extreme poverty: drug transactions gone wrong, domestic disputes where guns were too readily available. If Saras call had come from Madison or even Avondale, Jeffrey would not have been surprised. Drugs and gang violence were fast becoming a problem in the outlying towns. Heartsdale was the jewel of the three cities. In ten years, the only suspicious fatality in Heartsdale involved an old woman who had a heart attack when she caught her grandson stealing her television.

"Chief?"

Jeffrey reached down, picking up his radio. "Yeah?"

Maria Simms, the receptionist at the station house, said, "I've taken care of that thing you wanted."

"Good," he answered, then, "Radio silence until further notice."

Maria was quiet, not asking the obvious question. Grant was still a small town, and even in the station house there were people who would talk. Jeffrey wanted to keep a lid on this as long as possible.

"Copy?" Jeffrey asked.

Finally, she answered, "Yes, sir."

Jeffrey tucked his cell phone into his coat pocket as he got out of the car. Frank Wallace, his senior detective on the squad, was already standing sentry outside the diner.

"Anyone in or out?" Jeffrey asked.

He shook his head. "Brad's on the back door," he said. "The alarm's disconnected. I gotta think the perp used it for his in and out."

Jeffrey looked back at the street. Betty Reynolds, the owner of the five-and-dime, was out sweeping the sidewalk, casting suspicious glances at the diner. People would start walking over soon, if not out of curiosity, then for supper.

Jeffrey turned back to Frank. "Nobody saw anything?"

"Not a thing," Frank confirmed. "She walked here from her house. Pete says she comes here every Monday after the lunch rush."

Jeffrey managed a tight nod, walking into the diner. The Grant Filling Station was central to Main Street. With its big red booths and speckled white countertops, chrome rails and straw dispensers, it looked much as it probably had the day Pete's dad opened for business. Even the solid white linoleum tiles on the floor, so worn in spots the black adhesive showed through, were original to the restaurant. Jeffrey had eaten lunch here almost every day for the last ten years. The diner had been a source of comfort, something familiar after working with the dregs of humanity. He looked around the open room, knowing it would never be the same for him again.

Tessa Linton sat at the counter, her head in her hands. Pete Wayne sat opposite her, staring blindly out the window. Except for the day the space shuttle Challenger had exploded, this was the first time Jeffrey had ever seen him not wearing his paper hat inside the diner. Still, Pete's hair was bunched up into a point at the top, making his face look longer than it already was.

"Tess?" Jeffrey asked, putting his hand on her shoulder. She leaned into him, crying. Jeffrey smoothed her hair, giving Pete a nod.

Pete Wayne was normally a cheerful man, but his expression today was one of absolute shock. He barely acknowledged Jeffrey, continuing to stare out the windows lining the front of the restaurant, his lips moving slightly, no sound coming out.

A few moments of silence passed, then Tessa sat up. She fumbled with the napkin dispenser until Jeffrey offered his handkerchief. He waited until she had blown her nose to ask, "Where's Sara?"

Tessa folded the handkerchief. "She's still in the bathroom. I don't know-" Tessa's voice caught. "There was so much blood. She wouldn't let me go in."

He nodded, stroking her hair back off her face. Sara was very protective of her little sister, and this instinct had transferred to Jeffrey during their marriage. Even after the divorce, Jeffrey still felt in some way that Tessa and the Lintons were his family.

"You okay?" he asked.

She nodded. "Go ahead. She needs you."

Jeffrey tried not to react to this. If not for the fact that Sara was the county coroner, he would never see her. It said a lot about their relationship that somebody had to die in order for her to be in the same room with him.

Walking to the back of the diner, Jeffrey felt a sense of dread overcome him. He knew that something violent had happened. He knew that Sibyl Adams had been killed. Other than that, he had no idea what to expect when he tugged opened the door to the women's bathroom. What he saw literally took his breath away.

Sara sat in the middle of the room, Sibyl Adams's head in her lap. Blood was everywhere, covering the body, covering Sara, whose shirt and pants were soaked down the front, as if someone had taken a hose and sprayed her. Bloody shoe and hand prints marked the floor as if a great struggle had occurred.

Jeffrey stood in the doorway, taking all this in, trying to catch his breath.

"Shut the door," Sara whispered, her hand resting on Sibyl's forehead.

He did as he was told, walking around the periphery of the room. His mouth opened, but nothing would come out. There were the obvious questions to ask, but part of Jeffrey did not want to know the answers. Part of him wanted to take Sara out of this room, put her in his car, and drive until neither one of them could remember the way this tiny bathroom looked and smelled. There was the taste of violence in the air, morbid and sticky in the back of his throat. He felt dirty just standing there.

"She looks like Lena," he finally said, referring to Sibyl Adams's twin sister, a detective on his force. "For just a second I thought…" He shook his head, unable to continue.

" Lena 's hair is longer."

"Yeah," he said, unable to take his eyes off the victim. Jeffrey had seen a lot of horrible things in his time, but he had never personally known a victim of violent crime. Not that he knew Sibyl Adams well, but in a town as small as Heartsdale, everyone was your neighbor.

Sara cleared her throat. "Did you tell Lena yet?"

Her question fell on him like an anvil. Two weeks into his job as police chief, he had hired Lena Adams out of the academy in Macon. Those early years, she was like Jeffrey, an outsider. Eight years later he had promoted her to detective. At thirty-three, she was the youngest detective and only woman on the senior squad. And now her sister had been murdered in their own backyard, little more than two hundred yards from the police station. He felt a sense of personal responsibility that was almost suffocating.

"Jeffrey?"

Jeffrey took a deep breath, letting it go slowly. "She's taking some evidence to Macon," he finally answered. "I called the highway patrol and asked them to bring her back here."

Sara was looking at him. Her eyes were rimmed with red, but she hadn't been crying. Jeffrey was glad of this one thing, because he had never seen Sara cry. He thought if he saw her crying that something in him would give.

"Did you know she was blind?" she asked.

Jeffrey leaned against the wall. He had somehow forgotten that detail.

"She didn't even see it coming," Sara whispered. She bent her head down, looking at Sibyl. As usual, Jeffrey couldn't imagine what Sara was thinking. He decided to wait for her to talk. Obviously, she needed a few moments to collect her thoughts.

He tucked his hands into his pockets, taking in the space. There were two stalls with wooden doors across from a sink that was so old the fixtures for hot and cold were on opposite sides of the basin. Over this was a gold speckled mirror that was worn through at the edges. All told, the room was not more than twenty feet square, but the tiny black and white tiles on the floor made it seem even smaller. The dark blood pooling around the body didn't help matters. Claustrophobia had never been a problem for Jeffrey, but Sara's silence was like a fourth presence in the room. He looked up at the white ceiling, trying to get some distance.

Finally Sara spoke. Her voice was stronger, more confident. "She was on the toilet when I found her."

For lack of anything better to do, Jeffrey took out a small spiral-bound notebook. He grabbed a pen from his breast pocket and started to write as Sara narrated the events that had led up to this moment. Her voice became monotone as she described Sibyl's death in clinical detail.

"Then I asked Tess to bring my cell phone." Sara stopped speaking, and Jeffrey answered her question before she could get it out.

"She's okay," he provided. "I called Eddie on the way here."

"Did you tell him what happened?"

Jeffrey tried to smile. Sara's father was not one of his biggest fans. "I was lucky he didn't hang up on me."

Sara did not so much as smile, but her eyes finally met Jeffrey's. There was a softness there that he had not seen in ages. "I need to do the prelim, then we can take her to the morgue."

Jeffrey tucked the pad into his coat pocket as Sara gently slid Sibyl's head to the floor. She sat back on her heels, wiping her hands on the back of her pants.

She said, "I want to have her cleaned up before Lena sees her."

Jeffrey nodded. "She's at least two hours away. That should give us time to process the scene." He indicated the stall door. The lock was busted off. "Was the lock that way when you found her?"

"The lock's been that way since I was seven," Sara said, pointing to her briefcase beside the door. "Hand me a pair of gloves."

Jeffrey opened the case, trying not to touch the blood on the handles.

He pulled out a pair of latex gloves from an inside pocket. When he turned around, Sara was standing at the foot of the body. Her expression had changed, and despite the blood staining the front of her clothes, she seemed to be back in control.

Still, he had to ask, "Are you sure you want to do this? We can call somebody from Atlanta."

Sara shook her head as she slipped on the gloves with practiced efficiency. "I don't want a stranger touching her."

Jeffrey understood what she meant. This was a county matter. County people would take care of her.

Sara tucked her hands into her hips as she walked around the body. He knew she was trying to get some perspective on the scene, to take herself out of the equation. Jeffrey found himself studying his ex-wife as she did this. Sara was a tall woman, an inch shy of six feet, with deep green eyes and dark red hair. He was letting his mind wander, remembering how good it felt to be with her, when the sharp tone of her voice brought him back to reality.

"Jeffrey?" Sara snapped, giving him a hard look.

He stared back at her, aware that his mind had wandered off to what seemed like a safer place.

She held his gaze a second longer, then turned toward the stall. Jeffrey took another pair of gloves out of her briefcase and slipped them on as she talked.

"Like I said," Sara began, "she was on the toilet when I found her. We struggled to the floor, I rolled her on her back."

Sara lifted Sibyl's hands, checking under her fingernails. "There's nothing here. I imagine she was taken by surprise, didn't know what was going on until it was too late."

"You think it was quick?"

"Not too quick. Whatever he did, it looks planned to me. The scene was very clean until I came along. She would've bled out on the toilet if I hadn't had to use the rest room." Sara looked away. "Or maybe not, if I hadn't been late getting here."

Jeffrey tried to comfort her. "You can't know that."

She shrugged this off. "There's some bruising on her wrists where her arms hit the handicap bars. Also"-she opened Sibyl's legs slightly-"see here on her legs?"

Jeffrey followed her directions. The skin on the inside of both knees was scratched away. "What's that?" he asked.

"The toilet seat," she said. "The bottom edge is pretty sharp. I imagine she squeezed her legs together as she struggled. You can see some of the skin caught on the seat."

Jeffrey glanced at the toilet, then looked back at Sara. "Think he pushed her back on the toilet, then stabbed her?"

Sara didn't answer him. Instead, she pointed to Sibyl's bare torso. "The incision isn't deep until the middle of the cross," she explained, pressing into the abdomen, opening up the wound so that he could see. "I'd guess it was a double-edged blade. You can see the v shape on either side of the puncture." Sara easily slipped her index finger inside the wound. The skin made a sucking noise as she did this, and Jeffrey gritted his teeth, looking away. When he turned back, Sara was giving him a questioning look.

She asked, "Are you okay?"

He nodded, afraid to open his mouth.

She moved her finger around inside the hole in Sibyl Adams's chest. Blood seeped out from the wound. "I'd say it's at least a four-inch blade," she concluded, keeping her eyes on him. "Is this bothering you?"

He shook his head, even though the sound was making his stomach turn.

Sara slipped her finger out, continuing, "It was a very sharp blade. There's no hesitation around the incision, so like I said, he knew what he was doing when he started."

"What was he doing?"

Her tone was very matter-of-fact. "He was carving her stomach. His strokes were very assured, one down, one across, then a thrust into the upper torso. That was the death blow, I would imagine. Cause will probably be exsanguination."

"She bled to death?"

Sara shrugged. "Best guess right now, yeah. She bled to death. It probably took about ten minutes. The convulsions were from shock."

Jeffrey couldn't suppress the shudder that came. He indicated the wound. "It's a cross, right?"

Sara studied the cuts. "I'd say so. I mean, it can't really be anything else, can it?"

"Do you think this is some kind of religious statement?"

"Who can tell with rape?" she said, stopping at the look on his face. "What?"

"She was raped?" he said, glancing at Sibyl Adams, checking for obvious signs of damage. There was no bruising on her thighs or scrapes around the pelvic area. "Did you find anything?"

Sara was quiet. Finally she said, "No. I mean, I don't know."

"What did you find?"

"Nothing." She snapped off her gloves. "Just what I told you. I can finish this back at the morgue."

"I don't-"

"I'll call Carlos to come get her," she said, referring to her assistant at the morgue. "Meet me back there when you're finished here, okay?" When he didn't answer, she said, "I don't know about the rape, Jeff. Really. It was just a guess."

Jeffrey didn't know what to say. One thing he knew about his ex-wife was she did not make guesses in the field. "Sara?" he asked. Then, "Are you all right?"

Sara gave a mirthless laugh. "Am I all right?" she repeated. "Jesus, Jeffrey, what a stupid question." She walked over to the door, but didn't open it. When she spoke, her words came out clear and succinct. "You have to find the person who did this," she said.

"I know."

"No, Jeffrey." Sara turned around, giving him a piercing look. "This is a ritualistic attack, not a one-off. Look at her body. Look at the way she was left here." Sara paused, then continued, "Whoever killed Sibyl Adams planned it out carefully. He knew where to find her. He followed her into the bathroom. This is a methodical murder by someone who wants to make a statement."

He felt light-headed as he realized that what she was saying was the truth. He had seen this kind of murder before. He knew exactly what she was talking about. This was not the work of an amateur. Whoever had done this was probably working his way up to something much more dramatic at this very moment.

Sara still did not seem to think he understood. "Do you think he'll stop with one?"

Jeffrey did not hesitate this time. "No."

Chapter Three

LENA Adams frowned, flashing her headlights at the blue Honda Civic in front of her. The posted speed limit on this particular stretch of Georgia I-20 was sixty-five, but like most rural Georgians, Lena saw the signs as little more than a suggestion for tourists on their way to and from Florida. Case in point, the Civic's tags were from Ohio.

"Come on," she groaned, checking her speedometer. She was boxed in by an eighteen-wheeler on her right and the Civic-driving Yankee in front, who was obviously determined to keep her just above the speed limit. For a second, Lena wished she had taken one of Grant County 's cruisers. Not only was it a smoother ride than her Celica, there was the added pleasure of scaring the crap out of speeders.

Miraculously, the eighteen-wheeler slowed, letting the Civic pull over. Lena gave a cheery wave as the driver flipped her off. She hoped he had learned his lesson. Driving through the South was Darwinism at its best.

The Celiea climbed up to eighty-five as she sped out of the Macon city limits. Lena took a cassette tape out of its case. Sibyl had made her some driving music for the trip back. Lena slid the tape into the radio and smiled when the music started, recognizing the opening to Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation." The song had been the sisters' anthem during high school, and they had spent many a night speeding through back roads, singing "I don't give a damn about my bad reputation" at the top of their lungs. Thanks to an errant uncle, the girls were considered trash without the benefit of being particularly poor or, courtesy of their half-Spanish mother, all that white.

Running evidence up to the GBI lab in Macon was little more than courier work in the big scheme of things, but Lena was glad to have the assignment. Jeffrey had said she could take the day to cool down, his euphemism for getting her temper under control. Frank Wallace and Lena were butting heads over the same problem that had haunted their partnership from the beginning. At fifty-eight years old, Frank wasn't thrilled to have women on the force, let alone one as a partner. He was constantly leaving Lena out of investigations, while she was constantly trying to force herself back in. Something would have to give. As Frank was two years from retirement, Lena knew she would not be the one to bend first.

In truth, Frank was not a bad guy. Other than suffering from the kind of crankiness brought on by old age, he seemed to make an effort. On a good day, she could understand that his overbearing attitude came from a deeper place than his ego. He was the kind of man who opened doors for women and took his hat off indoors. Frank was even a Mason at the local lodge. He was not the kind of guy who would let his female partner lead an interrogation, let alone take point on a house raid. On a bad day, Lena wanted to lock him in his garage with the car running.

Jeffrey was right about the trip cooling her down. Lena made good time to Macon, shaving a full thirty minutes off the drive courtesy of the Celica's V-6. She liked her boss, who was the exact opposite of Frank Wallace. Frank was all gut instinct, while Jeffrey was more cerebral. Jeffrey was also the kind of man who was comfortable around women and did not mind when they voiced their opinions. The fact that he had from day one groomed Lena for her job as detective was not lost on her. Jeffrey did not promote her to meet some county quota or make himself look better than his predecessor; this was Grant County, after all, a town that had not even been on the maps until fifty years ago. Jeffrey had given Lena the job because he respected her work and her mind. The fact that she was a woman had nothing to do with it.

"Shit," Lena hissed, catching the flash of blue lights behind her. She slowed the car, pulling over as the Civic passed her. The Yankee beeped his horn and waved. It was Lena 's turn to give the Ohioan a one-finger salute.

The Georgia highway patrolman took his time getting out of his car. Lena turned to her purse in the backseat, rummaging around for her badge. When she turned back around, she was surprised to see the cop standing just to the rear of her vehicle. His hand was on his weapon, and she kicked herself for not waiting for him to come to the car. He probably thought she was looking for a gun.

Lena dropped the badge in her lap and held her hands in the air, offering, "Sorry," out the open window.

The cop took a tentative step forward, his square jaw working as he came up to the car. He took off his sunglasses and gave her a close look.

"Listen," she said, hands still raised. "I'm on the job."

He interrupted her. "Are you Detective Salena Adams?"

She lowered her hands, giving the patrolman a questioning look. He was kind of short, but his upper body was muscled in that way short men have of overcompensating for what they lacked in height. His arms were so thick they wouldn't rest flat to his sides. The buttons of his uniform were pulled tight against his chest.

"It's Lena," she offered, glancing at his name tag. "Do I know you?"

"No, ma'am," he returned, slipping on his sunglasses. "We got a call from your chief. I'm supposed to escort you back to Grant County."

"I'm sorry?" Lena asked, sure she hadn't heard correctly. "My chief? Jeffrey Tolliver?"

He gave a curt nod. "Yes, ma'am." Before she could ask him any further questions, he was walking back to his car. Lena waited for the patrolman to pull back onto the road, then started off after him. He sped up quickly, edging up to ninety within minutes. They passed the blue Civic, but Lena did not pay much attention. All she could think was, What did I do this time?

Chapter Four

THOUGH the Heartsdale Medical Center anchored the end of Main Street, it was not capable of looking nearly as important as its name would imply. Just two stories tall, the small hospital was equipped to do little more than handle whatever scrapes and upset stomachs couldn't wait for doctors' hours. There was a larger hospital about thirty minutes away in Augusta that handled the serious cases. If not for the county morgue being housed in the basement, the medical center would have been torn down to make way for student housing a long time ago.

Like the rest of the town, the hospital had been built during the town's upswing in the 1930s. The main floors had been renovated since then, but the morgue was obviously not important to the hospital board. The walls were lined with light blue tile that was so old it was coming back into style. The floors were a mixed check pattern of green and tan linoleum. The ceiling overhead had seen its share of water damage, but most of it had been patched. The equipment was dated but functional.

Sara's office was in the back, separated from the rest of the morgue by a large glass window. She sat behind her desk, looking out the window, trying to collect her thoughts. She concentrated on the white noise of the morgue: the air compressor on the freezer, the swish-swish of the water hose as Carlos washed down the floor. Since they were below ground, the walls of the morgue absorbed rather than deflected the sounds, and Sara felt oddly comforted by the familiar hums and swishes. The shrill ring of the phone interrupted the silence.

"Sara Linton," she said, expecting Jeffrey. Instead, it was her father.

"Hey, baby."

Sara smiled, feeling a lightness overcome her at the sound of Eddie Linton's voice. "Hey, Daddy."

"I've got a joke for you."

"Yeah?" She tried to keep her tone light, knowing humor was her father's way of dealing with stress. "What's that?"

"A pediatrician, a lawyer, and a priest were on the Titanic when it started to go down," he began. "The pediatrician says, 'Save the children.' The lawyer says, 'Fuck the children!' And the priest says, 'Do we have time?' "

Sara laughed, more for her father's benefit than anything else. He was quiet, waiting for her to talk. She asked, "How's Tessie?"

"Taking a nap," he reported. "How about you?"

"Oh, I'm okay." Sara started drawing circles on her desk calendar. She wasn't normally a doodler, but she needed something to do with her hands. Part of her wanted to check her briefcase, to see if Tessa had thought to put the postcard in there. Part of her did not want to know where it was.

Eddie interrupted her thoughts. "Mom says you have to come to breakfast tomorrow."

"Yeah?" Sara asked, drawing squares over the circles.

His voice took on a singsong quality. "Waffles and grits and toast and bacon."

"Hey," Jeffrey said.

Sara jerked her head up, dropping the pen. "You scared me," she said, then, to her father, "Daddy, Jeffrey's here-"

Eddie Linton made a series of unintelligible noises. In his opinion, there was nothing wrong with Jeffrey Tolliver that a solid brick to the head would not fix.

"All right," Sara said into the phone, giving Jeffrey a tight smile. He was looking at the etched sign on the glass, where her father had slapped a piece of masking tape over the last name TOLLIVER and written in LINTON with a black marker. Since Jeffrey had cheated on Sara with the only sign maker in town, it was doubtful that the lettering would be more professionally fixed anytime soon.

"Daddy," Sara interrupted, "I'll see you in the morning." She hung up the phone before he could get another word in.

Jeffrey asked, "Let me guess, he sends his love."

Sara ignored the question, not wanting to get into a personal conversation with Jeffrey. This was how he sucked her back in, making her think that he was a normal person capable of being honest and supportive when in actuality the minute Jeffrey felt like he was back in Sara's good graces he'd probably run for cover. Or, under the covers, to be more exact.

He said, "How's Tessa doing?"

"Fine," Sara said, taking her glasses out of their case. She slid them on, asking, "Where's Lena?"

He glanced at the clock on the wall. "About an hour away. Frank's going to page me when she's ten minutes out."

Sara stood, adjusting the waist of her scrubs. She had showered in the hospital lounge, storing her bloodied clothes in an evidence bag in case they were needed for trial.

She asked, "Have you thought about what you're going to tell her?"

He shook his head no. "I'm hoping we can get something concrete before I talk to her. Lena 's a cop. She's going to want answers."

Sara leaned over the desk, knocking on the glass. Carlos looked up. "You can go now," she said. Then, explaining to Jeffrey, "He's going to run blood and urine up to the crime lab. They're going to put it through tonight."

"Good."

Sara sat back in her chair. "Did you get anything from the bathroom?"

"We found her cane and glasses behind the toilet. They were wiped clean."

"What about the stall door?"

"Nothing," he said. "I mean, not nothing, but every woman in town's been in and out of that place. Last count Matt had over fifty different prints." He took some Polaroids out of his pocket and tossed them onto the desk. There were close-ups of the body lying on the floor alongside pictures of Sara's bloody shoe and hand prints.

Sara picked up one of these, saying, "I guess it didn't help matters that I contaminated the scene."

"It's not like you had a choice."

She kept her thoughts to herself, putting the pictures in logical sequence.

He repeated her earlier evaluation. "Whoever did this knew what he was doing. He knew she would go to the restaurant alone. He knew she couldn't see. He knew the place would be deserted that time of day."

"You think he was waiting for her?"

Jeffrey gave a shrug. "Seems that way. He probably came in and out the back door. Pete had disconnected the alarm so they could leave it open to air the place out."

"Yeah," she said, remembering the back door to the diner was propped open more times than not.

"So, we're looking for someone who knew her activities, right? Somebody who was familiar with the layout of the diner."

Sara did not want to answer this question, which implied that the killer was someone living in Grant, someone who knew the people and places the way only a resident could. Instead, she stood and walked back to the metal filing cabinet on the other side of her desk. She took out a fresh lab coat and slipped it on, saying, "I've already taken X rays and checked her clothing. Other than that, she's ready."

Jeffrey turned, staring out at the table in the center of the morgue. Sara looked, too, thinking that Sibyl Adams was a lot smaller in death than she seemed in life. Even Sara couldn't get used to the way death reduced people.

Jeffrey asked, "Did you know her well?"

Sara mulled over his question. Finally she said, "I guess. We both did career day at the middle school last year. Then, you know, I ran into her at the library sometimes."

"The library?" Jeffrey asked. "I thought she was blind."

"They have books on tape there, I guess." She stopped in front of him, crossing her arms. "Listen, I have to tell you this. Lena and I kind of had a fight a few weeks back."

Obviously, he was surprised. Sara was surprised, too. There were not a lot of people in town she did not get along with. But Lena Adams was certainly one of them.

Sara explained, "She called Nick Shelton at the GBI asking for a tox report on a case."

Jeffrey shook his head side to side, not understanding. "Why?"

Sara shrugged. She still didn't know why Lena had tried to go over her head, especially considering it was well known that Sara had a very good working relationship with Nick Shelton, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's field agent for Grant County.

"And?" Jeffrey prompted.

"I don't know what Lena thought she could accomplish by calling Nick directly. We had it out. No blood was shed, but I wouldn't say we parted on friendly terms."

Jeffrey shrugged, as if to say, What can you do? Lena had made a career out of ticking people off. Back when Sara and Jeffrey were married, Jeffrey had often voiced his concern over Lena 's impetuous behavior.

"If she was"-he stopped, then-"if she was raped, Sara. I don't know."

"Let's get started," Sara answered quickly, walking past him into the morgue. She stood in front of the supply cabinet, looking for a surgical gown. She paused, her hands on the doors as she played back their conversation in her mind, wondering how it had turned from a forensic evaluation into a discussion about Jeffrey's potential outrage had Sibyl Adams not just been killed but raped as well.

"Sara?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

Sara felt her anger spark at his stupid question. "What's wrong?" She found the gown and slammed the doors shut. The metal frame rattled from the force. Sara turned, ripping the sterile pack open. "What's wrong is I'm tired of you asking me what's wrong when it's pretty damn obvious what's wrong." She paused, snapping out the gown. "Think about it, Jeffrey. A woman literally died in my arms today. Not just a stranger, someone I knew. I should be at home right now taking a long shower or walking the dogs and instead I've got to go in there and cut her up, worse than she already is, so I can tell you whether or not you need to start pulling in all the perverts in town."

Her hands shook with anger as she tried to get into the gown. The sleeve was just out of her reach, and she was turning to get a better angle when Jeffrey moved to help her.

Her tone was nasty when she snapped, "I've got it." He held his hands up, palms toward her as if in surrender. "Sorry." Sara fumbled with the ties on the gown, ending up knotting the strings together. "Shit," she hissed, trying to work them back out. Jeffrey offered, "I could get Brad to go walk the dogs." Sara dropped her hands, giving up. "That's not the point, Jeffrey."

"I know it's not," he returned, approaching her the way he might a rabid dog. He took the strings and she looked down, watching him work out the knot. Sara let her gaze travel to the top of his head, noting a few gray strands in with the black. She wanted to will into him the ability to comfort her instead of trying to make a joke of everything. She wanted for him to magically develop the capacity for empathy. After ten years, she should have known better.

He loosened the knot with a smile, as if with this simple act he had just made everything better. He said, "There." Sara took over, tying the strings together in a bow. He put his hand under her chin. "You're okay," he said, not a question this time.

"Yeah," she agreed, stepping away. "I'm okay." She pulled out a pair of latex gloves, turning to the task at hand. "Let's just get the prelim over with before Lena gets back."

Sara walked over to the porcelain autopsy table bolted to the floor in the middle of the room. Curved with high sides, the white table hugged Sibyl's small body. Carlos had placed her head on a black rubber block and draped a white sheet over her. Except for the black bruise over her eye, she could be sleeping.

"Lord," Sara muttered as she folded back the sheet. Taking the body out of the kill zone had intensified the damage. Under the bright lights of the morgue, every aspect of the wound stood out. The incisions were long and sharp across the abdomen, forming an almost perfect cross. The skin puckered in places, drawing her attention away from the deep gouge at the intersection of the cross. Postmortem, wounds took on a dark, almost black, appearance. The rifts in Sibyl Adams's skin gaped open like tiny wet mouths.

"She didn't have a lot of body fat," Sara explained. She indicated the belly, where the incision opened wider just above the navel. The cut there was deeper, and the skin was pulled apart like a tight shirt that had popped a button. "There's fecal matter in the lower abdomen where the intestines were breached by the blade. I don't know if it was this deep on purpose or if the depth was accidental. It looks stretched."

She indicated the edges of the wound. "You can see the striation here at the tip of the wound. Maybe he moved the knife around. Twisted it. Also…" She paused, figuring things out as she went along. "There are traces of excrement on her hands as well as the bars in the stall, so I have to think she was cut, she put her hands to her belly, then she wrapped her hands around the bars for some reason."

She looked up at Jeffrey to see how he was holding up. He seemed rooted to the floor, transfixed by Sibyls body. Sara knew from her own experience that the mind could play tricks, smoothing out the sharp lines of violence. Even for Sara, seeing Sibyl again was perhaps worse than seeing her the first time.

Sara put her hands on the body, surprised that it was still warm. The temperature in the morgue was always low, even during the summer, because the room was underground. Sibyl should have been a lot cooler by now.

"Sara?" Jeffrey asked.

"Nothing," she answered, not prepared to make guesses. She pressed around the wound in the center of the cross. "It was a double-edged knife," she began. "Which helps you out some. Most stabbings are serrated hunting knives, right?"

"Yeah."

She pointed to a tan-looking mark around the center wound. Cleaning the body, Sara had been able to see a lot more than her initial exam in the bathroom had revealed. "This is from the cross guard, so he put it all the way in. I imagine I'll see some chipping on the spine when I open her up. I felt some irregularities when I put my finger in. There's probably some chipped bone still in there."

Jeffrey nodded for her to continue.

"If we're lucky, we'll get some kind of impression from the blade. If not that, then maybe something from the cross guard bruising. I can remove and fix the skin after Lena sees her."

She pointed to the puncture wound at the center of the cross. "This was a hard stab, so I would imagine the killer did it from a superior position. See the way the wound is angled at about a forty-five?" She studied the incision, trying to make sense of it. "I would almost say that the belly stab is different from the chest wound. It doesn't make sense."

"Why is that?"

"The punctures have a different pattern."

"Like how?"

"I can't tell," she answered truthfully. She let this drop for the moment, concentrating on the stab wound at the center of the cross. "So he's probably standing in front of her, legs bent at the knee, and he takes the knife back to his side"-she demonstrated, pulling her hand back-"then rams it into her chest."

"He uses two knives to do this?"

"I can't tell," Sara admitted, going back to the belly wound. Something wasn't adding up.

Jeffrey scratched his chin, looking at the chest wound. He asked, "Why not stab her in the heart?"

"Well, for one, the heart isn't at the center of the chest, which is where you would have to stab in order to hit the center of the cross. So, there's an aesthetic quality to his choice. For another, there's rib and cartilage surrounding the heart. He would have to stab her repeatedly to break through. That would mess up the appearance of the cross, right?" Sara paused. "There would be a great amount of blood if the heart was punctured. It would come out at a considerable velocity. Maybe he wanted to avoid that." She shrugged, looking up at Jeffrey. "I suppose he could have gone under the rib cage and up if he wanted to get to the heart, but that would have been a crapshoot at best."

"You're saying the attacker had some kind of medical knowledge?"

Sara asked, "Do you know where the heart is?"

He put his hand over the left side of his chest.

"Right. You also know your ribs don't meet all the way in the center."

He tapped his hand against the center of his chest. "What's this?"

"Sternum," she answered. "The cut's lower, though. It's in the xiphoid process. I can't say if that's blind luck or calculated."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning, if you're hell-bent on carving a cross on somebody's abdomen and putting a knife through the center, this is the best place to stab somebody if you want the knife to go through. There are three parts to the sternum," she said, using her own chest to illustrate. "The manubrium, which is the upper part, the body, which is the main part, then the xiphoid process. Of those three, the xiphoid is the softest. Especially in someone this age. She's what, early thirties?"

"Thirty-three."

"Tessa's age," Sara mumbled, and for a second she flashed on her sister. She shook this from her mind, focusing back on the body. "The xiphoid process calcifies as you age. The cartilage gets harder. So, if I was going to stab someone in the chest, this is where I'd make my X."

"Maybe he didn't want to cut her breasts?"

Sara considered this. "This seems more personal than that." She tried to find the words. "I don't know, I would think that he would want to cut her breasts. Know what I mean?"

"Especially if it's sexually motivated," he offered. "I mean, rape is generally about power, right? It's about being angry at women, wanting to control them. Why would he cut her there instead of in a place that makes her a woman?"

"Rape is also about penetration," Sara countered. "This certainly qualifies. It's a strong cut, nearly clean through. I don't think-" She stopped, staring at the wound, a new idea forming in her mind. "Jesus," she mumbled.

"What is it?" Jeffrey asked.

She could not speak for a few seconds. Her throat felt as if it was closing in on her.

"Sara?"

A beeping filled the morgue. Jeffrey checked his pager. "That can't be Lena," he said. "Mind if I use the phone?"

"Sure." Sara crossed her arms, feeling the need to protect herself from her own thoughts. She waited until Jeffrey was sitting behind her desk before she continued the examination.

Sara reached above her head, turning the light so that she could get a better look at the pelvic area. Adjusting the metal speculum, she mumbled a prayer to herself, to God, to anybody who would listen, to no avail. By the time Jeffrey returned, she was sure.

"Well?" he asked.

Sara's hands shook as she peeled off her gloves. "She was sexually assaulted early on in the attack." She paused, dropping the soiled gloves on the table, imagining in her mind Sibyl Adams sitting on the toilet, putting her hands to the open wound in her abdomen, then bracing herself against the bars on either side of the stall, completely blind to what was happening to her.

He waited a few beats before prompting, "And?"

Sara put her hands on the edges of the table. "There was fecal matter in her vagina."

Jeffrey did not seem to follow. "She was sodomized first?"

"There's no sign of anal penetration."

"But you found fecal matter," he said, still not getting it.

"Deep in her vagina," Sara said, not wanting to spell it out, knowing she would have to. She heard an uncharacteristic waver in her voice when she said, "The incision in her belly was deep on purpose, Jeffrey." She stopped, searching for words to describe the horror she had found.

"He raped her," Jeffrey said, not a question. "There was vaginal penetration."

"Yes," Sara answered, still searching for a way to clarify. Finally she said, "There was vaginal penetration after he raped the wound."

Chapter Five

NIGHT had come quickly, the temperature dropping along with the sun. Jeffrey was crossing the street just as Lena pulled into the parking lot of the station house. She was out of her car before he reached her.

"What's going on?" she demanded, but he could tell she already knew something was wrong. "Is it my uncle?" she asked, rubbing her arms to fight the chill. She was wearing a thin T-shirt and jeans, not her usual work attire, but the trip to Macon was a casual one.

Jeffrey took off his jacket, giving it to her. The weight of what Sara had told him sat on his chest like a heavy stone. If Jeffrey had anything to do with it, Lena would never know exactly what had happened to Sibyl Adams. She would never know what that animal had done to her sister.

"Let's go inside," he said, putting his hand under her elbow.

"I don't want to go inside," she answered, jerking her arm away. His coat fell between them.

Jeffrey leaned down, retrieving his jacket. When he looked up, Lena had her hands on her hips. As long as he had known her, Lena Adams had sported a chip on her shoulder the size of Everest. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Jeffrey had been thinking she would need a shoulder to cry on or words of comfort. He could not accept that there wasn't a soft side to Lena, maybe because she was a woman. Maybe because just a few minutes earlier he had seen her sister lying ripped apart in the morgue. He should have remembered that Lena Adams was harder than that. He should have anticipated the anger.

Jeffrey slipped his jacket back on. "I don't want to do this outside."

"What are you going to say?" she demanded. "You're going to say he was driving, right? And that he swerved off the road, right?" She ticked off the progression on her fingertips, giving him nearly verbatim the police handbook procedure for informing someone that a family member had died. Build up to it, the manual said. Don't spring it on them suddenly. Let the family member/loved one get used to the idea.

Lena counted it off, her voice getting louder with each sentence. "Was he hit by another car? Huh? And they took him to the hospital? And they tried to save him, but they couldn't. They did everything they could, huh?"

" Lena -"

She walked back toward her car, then turned around. "Where's my sister? Did you already tell her?"

Jeffrey took a breath, releasing it slowly.

"Look at that," Lena hissed, turning toward the station house, waving her hand in the air. Maria Simms was looking out one of the front windows. "Come on out, Maria," Lena yelled.

"Come on," Jeffrey said, trying to stop her.

She stepped away from him. "Where is my sister?"

His mouth did not want to move. Through sheer force of will, he managed, "She was in the diner."

Lena turned, walking down the street toward the diner.

Jeffrey continued, "She went to the bathroom."

Lena stopped in her tracks.

"There was someone in there. He stabbed her in the chest." Jeffrey waited for her to turn around, but she still did not. Lena 's shoulders were straight, her posture a study in stillness. He continued, "Dr. Linton was having lunch with her sister. She went into the bathroom and found her."

Lena turned slowly, her lips slightly parted.

"Sara tried to save her."

Lena looked him straight in the eye. He forced himself not to look away.

"She's dead."

The words hung in the air like moths around a streetlamp.

Lena 's hand went to her mouth. She walked in an almost drunken half circle, then turned back to Jeffrey. Her eyes bored into his, a question there. Was this some kind of joke? Was he capable of being this cruel?

"She's dead," he repeated.

Her breathing came in short staccatos. He could almost see her mind kicking into action as she absorbed the information. Lena walked toward the station house, then stopped. She turned to Jeffrey, mouth open, but said nothing. Without warning, she took off toward the diner.

" Lena!" Jeffrey called, running after her. She was fast for her size, and his dress shoes were no match for her sneakers pounding down the pavement. He tucked his arms in, pumping, pushing himself to catch her before she reached the diner.

He called her name again as she neared the diner, but she blew past it, taking a right turn toward the medical center.

"No," Jeffrey groaned, pushing himself harder. She was going to the morgue. He called her name again, but Lena did not look back as she crossed onto the hospital's drive. She slammed her body into the sliding doors, popping them out of their frames, sounding the emergency alarm.

Jeffrey was seconds behind her. He rounded the corner to the stairs, hearing Lena 's tennis shoes slapping against the rubber treads. A boom echoed up the narrow stairwell as she opened the door to the morgue.

Jeffrey stopped on the fourth step from the bottom. He heard Sara's surprised " Lena " followed by a pained groan.

He forced himself to take the last few steps down, made himself walk into the morgue.

Lena was bent over her sister, holding her hand. Sara had obviously tried to cover the worst of the damage with the sheet, but most of Sibyl's upper torso still showed.

Lena stood beside her sister, her breath coming in short pants, her whole body shaking as if from some bone-chilling cold.

Sara cut Jeffrey in two with a look. All he could do was hold his hands out. He had tried to stop her.

"What time was it?" Lena asked through chattering teeth. "What time did she die?"

"Around two-thirty," Sara answered. Blood was on her gloves, and she tucked them under her arms as if to hide it.

"She feels so warm."

"I know."

Lena lowered her voice. "I was in Macon, Sibby," she told her sister, stroking back her hair. Jeffrey was glad to see Sara had taken the time to comb some of the blood out.

Silence filled the morgue. It was eerie seeing Lena standing beside the dead woman. Sibyl was her identical twin, alike in every way. They were both petite women, about five four and little more than one hundred twenty pounds. Their skin had the same olive tone. Lena 's dark brown hair was longer than her sister's, Sibyl's curlier. The sisters' faces were a study in contrast, one flat and emotionless, the other filled with grief.

Sara turned slightly to the side, removing her gloves. She suggested, "Let's go upstairs, okay?"

"You were there," Lena said, her voice low. "What did you do to help her?"

Sara looked down at her hands. "I did what I could do."

Lena stroked the side of her sisters face, her tone a little sharper when she asked, "What exactly was it that you could do?"

Jeffrey stepped forward, but Sara gave him a sharp look to stop him, as if to say his time to help the situation had come and gone about ten minutes ago.

"It was very fast," Sara told Lena, obviously with some reluctance. "She started to go into convulsions."

Lena laid Sibyl's hand down on the table. She pulled the sheet up, tucking it under her sister's chin as she spoke. "You're a pediatrician, right? What exactly did you do to help my sister?" She locked eyes with Sara. "Why didn't you call a real doctor?"

Sara gave a short incredulous laugh. She inhaled deeply before answering, " Lena, I think you should let Jeffrey take you home now."

"I don't want to go home," Lena answered, her tone calm, almost conversational. "Did you call an ambulance? Did you call your boyfriend?" A tilt of her head indicated Jeffrey.

Sara's hands went behind her back. She seemed to be physically restraining herself. "We're not going to have this conversation now. You're too upset."

"I'm too upset," Lena repeated, clenching her hands. "You think I'm upset?" she said, her voice louder this time. "You think I'm too fucking upset to talk to you about why you fucking couldn't help my sister?"

As quickly as she had taken off in the parking lot, Lena was in Sara's face.

"You're a doctor!" Lena screamed. "How can she die with a fucking doctor in the room?"

Sara did not answer. She looked off to the side.

"You can't even look at me," Lena said. "Can you?"

Sara's focus did not change.

"You let my sister die and you can't even fucking look at toe."

" Lena," Jeffrey said, finally stepping in. He put his hand on her arm, trying to get her to back off.

"Let me go," she screamed, punching him with her fists. She started to pummel his chest, but he grabbed her hands, holding them tight. She still fought him, screaming, spitting, kicking. Holding her hands was like grabbing a live wire. He kept a firm hand, taking the abuse, letting her get it all out until she crumpled into a ball on the floor. Jeffrey sat beside her, holding her while she sobbed. When he thought to look, Sara was nowhere to be found.

Jeffrey pulled a handkerchief out of his desk with one hand, holding the phone to his ear with the other. He put the cloth to his mouth, dabbing at the blood as a metallic version of Sara's voice asked him to wait for the beep.

"Hey," he said, taking away the cloth. "You there?" He waited a few seconds. "I want to make sure you're okay, Sara." More seconds passed. "If you don't pick up, I'm going to come over." He expected to get a response to this, but nothing came. He heard the machine run out and hung up the phone.

Frank knocked on his office door. "The kid's in the bathroom," he said, meaning Lena. Jeffrey knew Lena hated to be called a kid, but this was the only way Frank Wallace could think to show his partner that he cared.

Frank said, "She's got a mean right, huh?"

"Yeah." Jeffrey folded the handkerchief for a fresh corner. "She know I'm waiting for her?"

Frank offered, "I'll make sure she doesn't make any detours."

"Good," Jeffrey said, then, "Thanks."

He saw Lena walking through the squad room, her chin tilted up defiantly. When she got to his office, she took her time shutting the door, then slumped into one of the two chairs across from him. She had the look of a teenager who had been called into the principal's office.

"I'm sorry I hit you," she mumbled.

"Yeah," Jeffrey returned, holding up the handkerchief. "I got worse at the Auburn-Alabama game." She did not respond, so he added, "And I was in the stands at the time."

Lena propped her elbow on the armrest and leaned her head into her hand. "What leads do you have?" she asked. "Any suspects?"

"We're running the computer right now," he said. "We should have a list in the morning."

She put her hand over her eyes. He folded the handkerchief, waiting for her to speak.

She whispered, "She was raped?"

"Yes."

"How badly?"

"I don't know."

"She was cut," Lena said. "This is some Jesus freak?"

His answer was the truth. "I don't know."

"You don't seem to know a hell of a lot," she finally said.

"You're right," he agreed. "I need to ask you some questions."

Lena did not look up, but he saw her give a slight nod.

"Was she seeing anybody?"

Finally she looked up. "No."

"Any old boyfriends?"

Something flickered in her eyes, and her answer didn't come as quickly as the last. "No."

"You sure about that?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Not even somebody from a few years back? Sibyl moved here, what, about six years ago?"

"That's right," Lena said, her voice hostile again. "She took a job at the college so she could be near me."

"Was she living with someone?"

"What does that mean?"

Jeffrey dropped the handkerchief. "It means what it means, Lena. She was blind. I'm assuming she needed help getting around. Was she living with someone?"

Lena pursed her lips, as if debating whether or not to answer. "She was sharing a house on Cooper with Nan Thomas."

"The librarian?" This would explain why Sara had seen her at the library.

Lena mumbled, "I guess I have to tell Nan about this, too."

Jeffrey assumed Nan Thomas already knew. Secrets did not stay kept for very long in Grant. Still, he offered, "I can tell her."

"No," she said, giving him a scathing look. "I think it would be better coming from someone who knows her."

The implication was clear to Jeffrey, but he chose not to confront her. Lena was looking for another fight, that much was obvious. "I'm sure she's probably already heard something. She won't know the details."

"She won't know about the rape, you mean?" Lena's leg bobbed up and down in a nervous twitch. "I guess I shouldn't tell her about the cross?"

"Probably not," he answered. "We need to keep some of the details close in case somebody confesses."

"I'd like to handle a false confession," Lena mumbled, her leg still shaking.

"You shouldn't be alone tonight," he told her. "You want me to call your uncle?" He reached for the phone, but she stopped him with a no.

"I'm fine," she said, standing. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow."

Jeffrey stood, too, glad to conclude this. "I'll call you as soon as we have something."

She gave him a funny look. "What time's the briefing?"

He saw where she was going with this. "I'm not going to let you work on this case, Lena. You have to know that."

"You don't understand," she said. "If you don't let me work on this, then you're going to have another stiff for your girlfriend down at the morgue."

Chapter Six

LENA banged her fist on the front door of her sister's house. She was about to go back to her car and get her spare set of keys when Nan Thomas opened the door.

Nan was shorter than Lena and about ten pounds heavier. Her short mousy brown hair and thick glasses made her resemble the prototypical librarian that she was.

Nan 's eyes were swollen and puffy, fresh tears still streaking down her cheeks. She held a balled-up piece of tissue in her hand.

Lena said, "I guess you heard."

Nan turned, walking back into the house, leaving the door open for Lena. The two women had never gotten along. Except for the fact that Nan Thomas was Sibyl's lover, Lena would not have said two words to her.

The house was a bungalow built in the 1920s. Much of the original architecture had been left in place, from the hardwood floors to the simple molding lining the doorways. The front door opened into a large living room with a fireplace at one end and the dining room at the other. Off this was the kitchen. Two small bedrooms and a bath finished the simple plan.

Lena walked purposefully down the hallway. She opened the first door on the right, entering the bedroom that had been turned into Sibyl's study. The room was neat and orderly, mostly by necessity. Sibyl was blind, things had to be put in their place or she would not be able to find them. Braille books were stacked neatly on the shelves. Magazines, also in Braille, were lined up on the coffee table in front of an old futon. A computer sat on the desk lining the far wall. Lena was turning it on when Nan walked into the room.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"I need to go through her things."

"Why?" Nan asked, going over to the desk. She put her hand over the keyboard, as if she could stop Lena.

"I need to see if anything was strange, if anyone was following her."

"You think you'll find it in here?" Nan demanded, picking up the keyboard. "She only used this for school. You don't even understand the voice recognition software."

Lena grabbed the keyboard back. "I'll figure it out."

"No, you won't," Nan countered. "This is my house, too."

Lena put her hands on her hips, walking toward the center of the room. She spotted a stack of papers beside an old Braille typewriter. Lena picked them up, turning to Nan. "What's this?"

Nan ran over, grabbing the papers. "It's her diary."

"Can you read it?"

"It's her personal diary," Nan repeated, aghast. "These are her private thoughts."

Lena chewed her bottom lip, trying for a softer tactic. That she had never liked Nan Thomas was not exactly a secret in this house. "You can read Braille, right?"

"Some."

"You need to tell me what this says, Nan. Somebody killed her." Lena tapped the pages. "Maybe she was being followed. Maybe she was scared of something and didn't want to tell us."

Nan turned away, her head tilted down toward the pages. She ran her fingers along the top line of dots, but Lena could tell she wasn't reading it. For some reason, Lena got the impression she was touching the pages because Sibyl had, as if she could absorb some sense of Sibyl rather than just words.

Nan said, "She always went to the diner on Mondays. It was her time out to do something on her own."

"I know."

"We were supposed to make burritos tonight." Nan stacked the papers against the desk. "Do what you need to do," she said. "I'll be in the living room."

Lena waited for her to leave, then continued the task at hand. Nan was right about the computer. Lena did not know how to use the software, and Sibyl had only used it for school. Sibyl dictated into the computer what she needed, and her teaching assistant made sure copies were made.

The second bedroom was slightly larger than the first. Lena stood in the doorway, taking in the neatly made bed. A stuffed Pooh bear was tucked between the pillows. Pooh was old, balding in places. Sibyl had rarely been without him throughout her childhood, and throwing him away had seemed like heresy. Lena leaned against the door, getting a mental flash of Sibyl as a child, standing with the Pooh bear. Lena closed her eyes, letting the memory overwhelm her. There wasn't much Lena wanted to remember about her childhood, but a particular day stuck out. A few months after the accident that had blinded Sibyl, they were in the backyard, Lena pushing her sister on the swing. Sibyl held Pooh tight to her chest, her head thrown back as she felt the breeze, a huge smile on her face as she relished this simple pleasure. There was such a trust there, Sibyl getting on the swing, trusting Lena not to push her too hard or too high. Lena had felt a responsibility. Her chest swelled from it, and she kept pushing Sibyl until her arms had ached.

Lena rubbed her eyes, shutting the bedroom door. She went into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. Other than Sibyls usual vitamins and herbs, the cabinet was empty. Lena opened the closet, rummaging past the toilet paper and tampons, hair gel and hand towels. What she was looking for, Lena did not know. Sibyl didn't hide things. She would be the last person to be able to find them if she did.

"Sibby," Lena breathed, turning back to the mirror on the medicine cabinet. Seeing Sibyl, not herself. Lena spoke to her reflection, whispering, "Tell me something. Please."

She closed her eyes, trying to navigate the space as Sibyl would. The room was small, and Lena could touch both walls with her hands as she stood in the center. She opened her eyes with a weary sigh. There was nothing there.

Back in the living room, Nan Thomas sat on the couch. She held Sibyl's diary in her lap, not looking up when Lena came in. "I read the last few days' worth of stuff," she said, her tone flat. "Nothing out of place. She was worried about a kid at school who was flunking."

"A guy?"

Nan shook her head. "Female. A freshman."

Lena leaned her hand against the wall. "Did you have any workmen in or out in the last month?"

"No."

"Same mailman delivering to the house? No UPS or FedEx?"

"Nobody new. This is Grant County, Lee."

Lena bristled at the familiar name. She tried to bite back her anger. "She didn't say she felt like she was being followed or anything?"

"No, not at all. She was perfectly normal." Nan clutched the papers to her chest. "Her classes were fine. We were fine." A slight smile came to her lips. "We were supposed to take a day trip to Eufalla this weekend."

Lena took her car keys out of her pocket. "Right," she quipped. "I guess if anything comes up you should call me."

"Lee-"

Lena held up her hand. "Don't."

Nan acknowledged the warning with a frown. "I'll call you if I think of anything."

By midnight, Lena was finishing off her third bottle of Rolling Rock, driving across the Grant County line outside of Madison. She contemplated throwing the empty out the car window but stopped herself at the last minute. She laughed at her twisted sense of morality; she would drive under the influence but she would not litter. The line had to be drawn somewhere.

Angela Norton, Lena 's mother, grew up watching her brother Hank dig himself deeper and deeper into a bottomless pit of alcohol and drug abuse. Hank had told Lena that her mother had been adamantly against alcohol. When Angela married Calvin Adams, her only rule of the house was that he not go out drinking with his fellow policemen. Cal was known to slip out now and then, but for the most part, he honored his wife's wishes. Three months into his marriage, he was making a routine traffic stop along a dirt road outside of Reece, Georgia, when the driver pulled a gun on him. Shot twice in the head, Calvin Adams died before his body hit the ground.

At twenty-three, Angela was hardly prepared to be a widow. When she passed out at her husbands funeral, her family chalked it up to nerves. Four weeks of morning sickness later, a doctor finally gave her the diagnosis. She was pregnant.

As her condition progressed, Angela became more despondent. She wasn't a happy woman to begin with. Life in Reece was not easy, and the Norton family had seen its share of hardship. Hank Norton was known for his volatile temper and was considered to be the kind of mean drunk you didn't want to run into in a dark alley. At her older brother's knee, Angela had learned not to put up much of a fight. Two weeks after giving birth to twin baby girls, Angela Adams succumbed to an infection. She was twenty-four years old. Hank Norton was the only relative willing to take in her two girls.

To hear Hank tell the story, Sibyl and Lena had turned his life around. The day he took them home was the day he stopped abusing his body. He claimed to have found God through their presence and to this day said he could recall minute by minute what it was like to hold Lena and Sibyl for the first time.

In truth, Hank only stopped shooting up speed when the girls came to live with him. He did not stop drinking until much later. The girls were eight when it happened. A bad day at work had sent Hank on a binge. When he ran out of liquor, he decided to drive instead of walk to the store. His car didn't even make it to the street. Sibyl and Lena were playing ball out in the front yard. Lena still didn't know what had been going through Sibyl's mind as she chased the ball into the driveway. The car had struck her from the side, the steel bumper slamming into her temple as she bent to retrieve the ball.

County services had been called in, but nothing came of the investigation. The closest hospital was a forty-minute drive from Reece. Hank had plenty of time to sober up and give a convincing story. Lena could still recall being in the car with him, watching his mouth work as he figured out the story in his mind. At the time, eight-year-old Lena was not quite sure what had happened, and when the police interviewed her she had supported Hank's story.

Sometimes Lena still had dreams about the accident, and in these dreams Sibyl's body bounced against the ground much as the ball had. That Hank had allegedly not touched another drop of alcohol since then was of no consequence to Lena. The damage had been done.

Lena opened another bottle of beer, removing both hands from the wheel to twist off the cap. She took a long pull, grimacing at the taste. Alcohol had never appealed to her. Lena hated being out of control, hated the dizzy sensation and the numbness. Getting drunk was something for the weak, a crutch for people who were not strong enough to live their own lives, to stand on their own two feet. Drinking was running away from something. Lena took another swig of beer, thinking there was no better time than the present for all of these things.

The Celica fishtailed as she took the turn off the exit too hard. Lena corrected the wheel with one hand, holding tight to the bottle with the other. A hard right at the top of the exit took her to the Reece Stop 'n' Save. The store inside was dark. Like most businesses in town, the gas station closed at ten. Though, if memory served, a walk around the building would reveal a group of teenagers drinking, smoking cigarettes, and doing things their parents did not want to know about. Lena and Sibyl had walked to this store many a dark night, sneaking out of the house under Hank's none-too-watchful eye.

Scooping up the empty bottles, Lena got out of the car. She stumbled, her foot catching on the door. A bottle slipped out of her hands and busted on the concrete. Cursing, she kicked the shards away from her tires, walking toward the trash can. Lena stared at her reflection in the store's plate glass windows as she tossed her empties. For a second, it was like looking at Sibyl. She reached over to the glass, touching her lips, her eyes.

"Jesus." Lena sighed. This was one of the many reasons she did not like to drink. She was turning into a basket case.

Music blared from the bar across the street. Hank considered it a test of will that he owned a bar but never imbibed. The Hut looked like its name, with a southern twist. The roof was thatched only until it mattered, then a rusted tin lined the pitched surface. Tiki torches with orange and red lightbulbs instead of flames stood on either side of the entrance, and the door was painted to look like it had been fashioned from grass. Paint peeled from the walls, but for the most part you could still make out the bamboo design.

Drunk as she was, Lena had the sense to look both ways before she crossed the street. Her feet were about ten seconds behind her body, and she held her hands out to her sides for balance as she walked across the gravel parking lot. Of the fifty or so vehicles in the lot, about forty were pickup trucks. This being the new South, instead of gun racks they sported chrome runners and gold striping along their sides. The other cars were Jeeps and four-wheel drives. Nascar numbers were painted onto the back windshields. Hank's cream-colored 1983 Mercedes was the only sedan in the lot.

The Hut reeked of cigarette smoke, and Lena had to take a few shallow breaths so she wouldn't choke. Her eyes burned as she walked over to the bar. Not much had changed in the last twenty or so years. The floor was still sticky from beer and crunchy from peanut shells. To the left were booths that probably had more DNA material in them than the FBI lab at Quantico. To the right was a long bar fashioned from fifty-gallon barrels and heart of pine. A stage was on the far wall, the rest rooms for men and women on either side. In the middle of the bar was what Hank called a dance floor. Most nights, it was packed back to front with men and women in various stages of drunken arousal. The Hut was a two-thirty bar, meaning everybody looked good at two-thirty in the morning.

Hank was nowhere to be seen, but Lena knew he wouldn't be far on amateur night. Every other Monday, patrons of the Hut were invited to stand onstage and embarrass themselves in front of the rest of the town. Lena shuddered as she thought about it. Reece made Heartsdale look like a bustling metropolis. Except for the tire factory, most of the men in this room would have left a long time ago. As it was, they were content to drink themselves to death and pretend they were happy.

Lena slid onto the first vacant stool she could find. The country song on the jukebox had a pounding bass, and she leaned her elbows on the bar, cupping her hands over her ears so that she could hear herself think.

She felt a bump on her arm and looked up in time to see Webster's definition of a hick sitting down beside her. His face was sunburned from his neck to about an inch from his hairline where he had obviously been working outside wearing a baseball hat. His shirt was starched within an inch of its life, and the cuffs were tight around his thick wrists.

The jukebox stopped abruptly, and Lena worked her jaw, trying to make her ears pop so she didn't feel like she was in a tunnel.

Her gentleman neighbor bumped her arm again, smiling, saying, "Hey, lady."

Lena rolled her eyes, catching the bartender's eye. "JD on the rocks," she ordered.

"That'n's on me," the man said, slapping down a ten-dollar bill. When he spoke, his words slurred together like a wrecked train, and Lena realized he was a lot drunker than she planned ever to be.

The man gave her a sloppy smile. "You know, sugar, I'd love to get biblical with you."

She leaned over, close to his ear. "If I ever find out you have, I'll cut your balls off with my car keys."

He opened his mouth to reply but was jerked off the barstool before he could get a word out. Hank stood there with the man's shirt collar in his hand, then shoved him into the crowd. The look he fixed Lena with was just as hard as the one she imagined was on her own face.

Lena had never liked her uncle. Unlike Sibyl, she wasn't the forgiving type. Even when Lena drove Sibyl to Reece for visits, Lena spent most of her time in the car or sitting on the front porch steps, keys in her hand, ready to go as soon as Sibyl walked out the front door.

Despite the fact that Hank Norton had injected speed into his veins for the better part of his twenties and thirties, he was not an idiot. Lena showing up on Hank's proverbial doorstep in the middle of the night could only mean one thing.

Their eyes were still locked as music started to blare again, shaking the walls, sending a vibration from the floor up the barstool. She saw rather than heard what Hank was asking when he said, "Where's Sibyl?"

Tucked behind the bar, more like an outhouse than a place of business, Hank's office was a small wooden box with a tin roof. A lightbulb hung from a frayed electrical wire that had probably been installed by the WPA. Posters from beer and liquor companies served as wallpaper. White cartons filled with liquor were stacked against the back wall, leaving about ten square feet for a desk with two chairs on either side. Surrounding these were piles of boxes stuffed with receipts that Hank had accumulated from running the bar over the years. A stream running behind the shack kept mold and moisture in the air. Lena imagined Hank liked working in this dark, dank place, passing his days in an environment more suitable for a tongue.

"I see you've redecorated," Lena said, setting her glass on top of one of the boxes. She could not tell if she wasn't drunk anymore or if she was too drunk to notice.

Hank gave the glass a cursory glance, then looked back at Lena. "You don't drink."

She held up the glass in a toast. "To the late bloomer."

Hank sat back in his office chair, his hands clasped in front of his stomach. He was tall and skinny, with skin that tended to flake in the winter. Despite the fact that his father was Spanish, Hank's appearance more closely resembled his mother's, a pasty woman who was as sour as her complexion. In her mind, Lena had always thought it appropriate that Hank bore a close resemblance to an albino snake.

He asked, "What brings you to these parts?"

"Just dropping by," she managed around the glass. The whiskey was bitter in her mouth. She kept an eye on Hank as she finished the drink and banged the empty glass back down on the box. Lena did not know what was stopping her. For years she had waited to get the upper hand with Hank Norton. This was her time to hurt him as much as he had hurt Sibyl.

"You started snortin' coke, too, or have you been crying?"

Lena wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "What do you think?"

Hank stared at her, working his hands back and forth. This was more than a nervous habit, Lena knew. Speed injected into the veins of his hands had given Hank arthritis at an early age. Since most of the veins in his arms had calcified from the powdered additive used to cut the drug, there wasn't much circulation there, either. His hands were cold as ice most days and a constant source of pain.

The rubbing stopped abruptly. "Let's get it over with, Lee. I've got the show to put on."

Lena tried to open her mouth, but nothing came out. Part of her was angered by his flippant attitude, which had marked their relationship from the very beginning. Part of her did not know how to tell him. As much as Lena hated her uncle, he was a human being. Hank had doted on Sibyl. In high school, Lena could not take her sister everywhere, and Sibyl had spent a lot of time home with Hank. There was an undeniable bond there, and as much as Lena wanted to hurt her uncle, she felt herself holding back. Lena had loved Sibyl, Sibyl had loved Hank.

Hank picked up a ballpoint pen, turning it head over end on the desk several times before he finally asked, "What's wrong, Lee? Need some money?"

If only it were that simple, Lena thought.

"Car broke down?"

She shook her head slowly side to side.

"It's Sibyl," he stated, his voice catching in his throat.

When Lena did not answer, he nodded slowly to himself, putting his hands together, as if to pray. "She's sick?" he asked, his voice indicating he expected the worst. With this one sentence, he showed more emotion than Lena had ever seen him express in a lifetime of knowing her uncle. She looked at him closely as if for the first time. His pale skin was blotched with those red dots pasty men get on their faces as they age. His hair, silver for as long as she could recall, was dulled with yellow under the sixty-watt bulb. His Hawaiian shirt was rumpled, which was not his style, and his hands tremored slightly as he fidgeted with them.

Lena did it the same way Jeffrey Tolliver had. "She went to the diner in the middle of town," she began. "You know the one across from the dress shop?"

A slight nod was all he gave.

"She walked there from the house," Lena continued. "She did it every week, just to be able to do something on her own."

Hank clasped his hands together in front of his face, touching the sides of his index fingers to his forehead.

"So, uhm." Lena picked up the glass, needing something to do. She sucked what little liquor was left off the ice cubes, then continued. "She went to the bathroom, and somebody killed her."

There was little sound in the tiny office. Grasshoppers chirped outside. Gurgling came from the stream. A distant throbbing came from the bar.

Without preamble, Hank turned around, picking through the boxes, asking, "What've you had to drink tonight?"

Lena was surprised by his question, though she shouldn't have been. Despite his AA brainwashing, Hank Norton was a master at avoiding the unpleasant. His need to escape was what had brought Hank to drugs and alcohol in the first place. "Beer in the car," she said, playing along, glad for once that he did not want the gory details. "JD here."

He paused, his hand around a bottle of Jack Daniel's. "Beer before liquor, never sicker," he warned, his voice catching on the last part.

Lena held out her glass, rattling the ice for attention. She watched Hank as he poured the drink, not surprised when he licked his lips.

"How's work treating you?" Hank asked, his voice tinny in the shack. His lower lip trembled slightly. His expression was one of total grief, in direct opposition to the words coming from his mouth. He said, "Doing okay?"

Lena nodded. She felt as if she was smack in the middle of a car accident. She finally understood the meaning of the word surreal. Nothing seemed concrete in this tiny space. The glass in her hand felt dull. Hank was miles away. She was in a dream.

Lena tried to snap herself out of it, downing her drink quickly. The alcohol hit the back of her throat like fire, burning and solid, as if she had swallowed hot asphalt.

Hank watched the glass, not Lena, as she did this.

This was all she needed. She said, "Sibyl's dead, Hank."

Tears came to his eyes without warning, and all that Lena could think was that he looked so very, very old. It was like watching a flower wilt. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his nose.

Lena repeated the words much as Jeffrey Tolliver had earlier this evening. "She's dead."

His voice wavered as he asked, "Are you sure?"

Lena nodded quickly up and down. "I saw her." Then, "Somebody cut her up pretty bad."

His mouth opened and closed like a fish's. He kept his eyes even with Lena's the way he used to do when he was trying to catch her in a lie. He finally looked away, mumbling, "That doesn't make sense."

She could have reached out and patted his old hand, maybe tried to comfort him, but she didn't. Lena felt frozen in her chair. Instead of thinking of Sibyl, which had been her mind's initial reaction, she concentrated on Hank, on his wet lips, his eyes, the hairs growing out of his nose.

"Oh, Sibby." He sighed, wiping his eyes. Lena watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. He reached for the bottle, resting his hand on the neck. Without asking, he unscrewed the cap and poured Lena another drink. This time, the dark liquid nearly touched the rim.

More time passed, then Hank blew his nose loudly, patting at his eyes with the handkerchief. "I can't see anyone trying to kill her." His hands shook even more as he folded the handkerchief over and over. "Doesn't make sense," he mumbled. "You, I could understand."

"Thanks a lot."

This was sufficient enough to spark Hank's irritation. "I mean because of the job you do. Now get that damn chip off your shoulder."

Lena did not comment. This was a familiar order.

He put his palms down on the desk, fixing Lena with a stare. "Where were you when this happened?"

Lena tossed back the drink, not feeling the burn so much this time. When she returned the glass to the desk, Hank was still staring at her.

She mumbled, "Macon."

"Was it some sort of hate crime, then?"

Lena reached over, picking up the bottle. "I don't know. Maybe." The whiskey gurgled in the bottle as she poured. "Maybe he picked her because she was gay. Maybe he picked her because she was blind." Lena gave a sideways glance, catching his pained reaction to this. She decided to expound upon her speculation. "Rapists tend to pick women they think they can control, Hank. She was an easy target."

"So, this all comes back to me?"

"I didn't say that."

He grabbed the bottle. "Right," he snapped, dropping the half empty bottle back into its box. His tone was angry now, back to the nuts and bolts. Like Lena, Hank was never comfortable with the emotional side of things. Sibyl had often said the main reason Hank and Lena never got along was that they were too much alike. Sitting there with Hank, absorbing his grief and anger as it filled the tiny shed, Lena realized that Sibyl was right. She was looking at herself in twenty years, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Hank asked, "Have you talked to Nan?"

"Yeah."

"We've got to plan the service," he said, picking up the pen and drawing a box on his desk calendar. At the top he wrote the word FUNERAL in all caps. "Is there somebody in Grant you think would do a good job?" He waited for her response, then added, "I mean, most of her friends were there."

"What?" Lena asked, the glass paused at her lips. "What are you talking about?"

"Lee, we've got to make arrangements. We've got to take care of Sibby."

Lena finished the drink. When she looked at Hank, his features were blurred. As a matter of fact, the whole room was blurred. She had the sensation of being on a roller coaster, and her stomach reacted accordingly. Lena put her hand to her mouth, fighting the urge to be sick.

Hank had probably seen her expression many times before, most likely in the mirror. He was beside her, holding a trash can under her chin, just as she lost the battle.