Kisscut

Chapter Four

Lena ran her tongue along her front teeth as she stared out the car window. She could not get used to the fake feeling of the temporary partials. In three weeks, she would be fitted with four permanent replacements that would screw into her gums like tiny lightbulbs. She could not imagine how that would feel. For now, they served as a constant reminder of what had happened to her four months ago.

She tried to block out the memory as she watched the scenery go by. Grant County was a small town, but not as small as Reece, where Lena and Sibyl, her twin sister, had grown up. Their father had been killed in the line of duty eight months before they were born and their mother had died giving birth to them. The task of raising the girls had fallen to their uncle Hank Norton, an admitted speed freak and alcoholic, who had struggled with both addictions well into the girls' childhood. One sunny afternoon, a drunk Hank had backed his car down the driveway and slammed into Sibyl. Lena had always blamed him for blinding her sister. She would never forgive Hank for his role in the accident, and his response to her hatred was a seemingly insurmountable wall of anger. They had a past, the two of them, that prevented each from reaching out to the other. Even now, with Sibyl dead and Lena just as good as, Lena could not see Hank Norton as anything but a necessary evil in her life.

"Hot outside," Hank mumbled as he patted the back of his neck with a worn-looking handkerchief. Lena could barely hear him over the roar of the air-conditioning. Hank's old Mercedes sedan was a tank of a car, and everything inside the cab seemed overdone. The seats were too big. There was enough legroom to accommodate a horse. The controls on the dash were large and obvious, their design intended to impress more than elucidate. Still, it was comforting being inside something so solid. Even on the gravel road down from Lena 's house, the car seemed to float across the ground.

"Sure is hot," Hank repeated. The older he got, the more he did this, as if repeating phrases made up for the fact that he didn't have much to say.

"Yeah," Lena agreed, staring back out the window. She could feel Hank looking at her, probably contemplating small talk. After a few beats, he seemed to give up on this, and turned on the radio instead.

Lena leaned her head back against the seat, closing her eyes. She had agreed to go to church with her uncle one Sunday shortly after she had gotten home from the hospital, and her attendance had turned into a habit over the ensuing months. Lena tagged along more because she was afraid to stay alone in her own home than because she wanted absolution. In her mind, Lena would never need forgiveness for anything ever again. She had paid her dues to God or whomever was keeping track of things four months ago, raped and dragged into a nightmare world of pain and false transcendence.

Hank interrupted her again. "You doin' okay, baby?"

What a stupid question, Lena thought. What a stupid fucking question.

"Lee?"

"Yes," she answered, conscious that the word hissed through her temporary teeth.

" Nan called again," he told her.

"I know," Lena said. Nan Thomas, Sibyl's lover at the time of her death, had been calling off and on for the last month.

"She's got some of Sibby's stuff," Hank said, though surely he knew Lena was aware of this. "She just wants to give it to you."

"Why doesn't she give it to you?" Lena countered. There was no reason she needed to see that woman, and Hank knew it. Still, he kept forcing the issue.

Hank changed the subject. "That girl last night," he began, turning down the radio. "You were there, huh?"

"Yes," she said, making the same hissing sound. Lena clenched her jaw, willing herself not to cry. Would she ever talk normally again? Would even the sound of her voice be a constant reminder of what he did to her?

He, Lena thought, unable to let her mind use his name. Her hands rested in her lap, and she looked down, staring at the matching scars on the back of her hands. If Hank had not been there, she would have turned them over, looked at the palms where the nails had pierced through as they were hammered into the floor. The same scars were on her feet, midway between her toes and ankles. Two months of physical therapy had returned the normal use of her hands and she could now walk without cringing, but the scars would always be there.

Lena had only a few sharp memories of what had happened to her body while she was abducted. Only the scars and her chart at the hospital told the entire story. All she remembered were the moments when the drugs wore off and he came to her, sitting by her on the floor as if they were at Bible camp, telling stories about his childhood and his life as if they were lovers, just getting to know each other.

Lena 's mind was filled with the details of his life: his first kiss, his first time making love, his hopes and dreams, his sick obsessions. They came to her now as easily as memories from her own past. Had she told him similar stories about herself? She could not remember, and this scarred her more deeply than the physical aspects of the attack. At times, Lena thought of the scars as inconsequential compared to the intimate conversations she had with her abuser. He had manipulated Lena so that she was no longer in control of her own thoughts. He had not just raped her body, but her mind as well.

Even now, his memories constantly mingled with her own, until she was uncertain whether or not something had happened to her or to him. Sibyl, the one person who could settle this, the one person who could give Lena back her life, her childhood, had been taken by him as well.

"Lee?" Hank interrupted her thoughts, holding out a pack of gum. She shook her head no, watching him try to hold the wheel and retrieve a stick of Juicy Fruit. The sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled up, and she could see the track marks lining his pasty white forearms. They were hideous, these scars, and they reminded Lena of Jenny Weaver. Last night, Jeffrey had kept asking why anyone would purposefully cut herself, but Lena understood how pain could be a comfort. About six weeks after being released from the hospital, Lena had accidentally slammed her fingers in the door of her car. Searing hot pain had radiated up her arm, and for the briefest moment, Lena had caught herself enjoying it, thinking, This is what it's like to feel again.

She closed her eyes, clasping her hands in her lap. As usual, her fingers found the scars and she traced the circumference of one, then the other. There had been no pain when it had happened. The drug had convinced her that she was floating on the ocean, that she was safe. Her mind had created an alternate reality from the one her rapist created. When he touched her, Lena 's mind had told her it was Greg Mitchell, her old boyfriend, inside of her. Lena 's body had responded to Greg, not him.

Yet, the few times since then that Lena had been able to sleep long enough to dream, she had dreamed of her rapist touching her, not Greg. It was his hands on her breasts. It was him inside of her. And when she awakened, startled and scared, it was not Greg that she looked for in her dark, empty room.

Lena clenched her fists when the sickly sweet smell of Hank's chewing gum hit her. Without warning, her stomach pitched.

"Pull over," she managed, using one hand to cover her mouth, grabbing the door handle with the other. Hank abruptly swerved the car to the side of the road just as Lena lost it. She had only had a cup of coffee for breakfast, but that and more came up quickly. Soon, she was dry heaving, her stomach clenching. Tears came to her eyes from the exertion, and her body shook hard as she tried to hold herself up.

After what seemed like several minutes, the nausea finally passed. Lena wiped her mouth with the back of her hand just as Hank tapped her on the shoulder, offering his handkerchief. The cloth was warm and smelled of his sweat, but she used it anyway.

"Your gum," she mumbled, grasping the dashboard as she tried to sit up. "I don't know why-"

"It's okay," he answered abruptly. The window sucked down at the press of a button, and he spit out the gum before pulling onto the road again. Hank stared straight ahead, his jaw a straight line.

"I'm sorry," she said, not knowing why she was apologizing even as she said the words. Hank seemed angry, but she knew his animosity was directed toward himself for not knowing how to help, not at Lena. It was a familiar scene that had played out every day since she had come home from the hospital.

Lena reached around to retrieve her purse from the back seat. There were Pepto Bismol tablets and Altoids in there for this very occasion. She hated her days off from work. When she was on the job, she was too busy to allow the luxury of these episodes. There were reports to fill out, and calls to make. She knew who she was at the station, and riding around with Brad, an assignment she had balked at initially, made her feel competent and safe.

It wasn't that she was throwing herself into her job because being a cop was the only thing keeping her alive. Lena knew better than that. She would feel the same way if she were a cashier at the hardware store or a janitor at the high school. Crime and criminals had as much meaning to her as giving out the correct change would, or getting a stain off the cafeteria floor. What her job gave her these days was structure. She had to show up at eight in the morning. Certain tasks were expected of her. Brad needed direction. At noon, they had lunch, or, rather, Brad did. Lena did not have an appetite lately. Around three, they stopped for coffee at the Donut King over in Madison. They were back at the station by six and Lena 's world fell apart until it was time to go back to work the next day. On the rare nights-nights like last night-when Jeffrey allowed her to take overtime, she nearly wept with relief.

Hank asked, "You okay now?" the accusatory tone still in his voice.

She gave it right back to him. "Just drop it."

"Yeah, okay," he answered, thumping the turning signal down as he stopped behind a line of cars in front of the church. They were both silent as the car inched closer to the parking lot.

Lena looked up at the small white building, resenting it for being there. She had never liked church and had even been thrown out of Sunday school at the age of twelve for ripping out the pages of a Bible. When Hank had confronted her, she had told him she had done it out of boredom, but the truth was that even then Lena had resented rules. She hated being told what to do. She could not follow an authority that had not proven itself to her. The only reason she was good at being a cop was she had a certain degree of autonomy in the field, and everyone had to listen to her when she told them to.

"That girl," Hank said, picking up the conversation as if the last ten minutes had not happened. "It's a sad thing, what she did."

"Yeah," Lena shrugged, not really wanting to think about it.

"People get lost along the way, I guess," Hank said. "Don't ask nobody for help until it's too late." He paused, then, "Not until it's too late."

She knew what he was doing, making a comparison between the dead girl and herself. Some bullshit A.A. pamphlet probably had the directions for doing this on the back, right beside a little space where you could fill in your sponsor's name and phone number.

Lena snapped, "If I was going to kill myself, I would have done it my first day home."

"I wasn't talking about you," Hank shot back.

"Bullshit," she hissed. She waited a beat, then said, "I thought you were going home soon."

"I am," he answered.

"Good," she told him, and for the moment, she really meant it. Hank had been living with her since she came home from the hospital, and Lena was over having him pry into every part of her life.

"I got a business to run," he told her, as if the dilapidated bar he owned on the outskirts of Reece was IBM. "I need to get back to it. I'll leave tonight if you want me to."

"Fine," she said, but her heart started pounding at the thought of being alone at night. Lena did not want Hank in her home, but she knew that she would never feel safe if he left. Even during the daytime when she was working and Hank went to check on his bar, she felt an aching fear that he would get into a car accident or just decide not to come back at all, and Lena would have to come home to a dark, empty house. Hank was not just an unwanted house guest. He was her shield.

He told her, "I got better things I could be doing."

She was quiet, though in her mind, she repeated her mantra-please don't leave me, please don't leave me. Her throat was closing up with the need to say it out loud.

The car jerked as Hank accelerated, taking a parking space close to the chapel. He slammed the gear into park and the old sedan rocked back and forth several times before it settled.

He glanced at her, and she could tell that he knew he had her. "You want me to go? Tell me to go, then. You never had a hard time telling me to leave before."

She bit her lip hard, wanting to taste blood. Instead of her flesh giving, her front teeth moved, and she put her hand to her mouth, startled by the reminder.

"What? You can't talk now?"

Lena choked a sob, overcome with emotion.

Hank looked away from her, waiting for her to get hold of herself. She knew that he could listen to a room full of strangers whine about wanting needles in their arms or double shots of whiskey, but could not handle Lena 's tears. Part of her also knew that he hated Lena for crying. Sibyl had been his baby, the one he had taken care of. Lena was the strong one who didn't need anybody. The role reversal had knocked him on his ass.

"You gotta go to that therapist," Hank barked at her, still angry. "Your chief told you that. It's a requirement, and you're not doing it."

She shook her head side to side in a violent arc, her hand still at her mouth.

"You don't run anymore. You don't work out," he began, as if this was part of an indictment against her. "You go to bed at nine and don't get up until late as you can the next morning," he continued. "You don't take care of yourself anymore."

"I take care of myself," she mumbled.

"You go see a therapist or I'm leaving today, Lee." He put his hand over hers, forcing her to turn her head. "I am serious as a fucking heart attack, child."

Suddenly, his expression changed, and the hard lines around his face softened. He pushed back her hair with his fingers, his touch light against her skin. Hank was trying to be paternal with her, but the soft way he touched her was a sickening reminder of the way he had touched her before. The tenderness had been the worst part: the soft strokes, the delicate way he used his tongue and fingers to soothe and stimulate her, the agonizingly slow way he had fucked her, as if he were making love to her instead of raping her.

Lena started to shake. She could not stop herself. Hank moved his hand away quickly, as if he had just realized he was touching something dead. Lena jerked back, her head banging into the window.

"Don't ever do that again," she warned, but there was only fear in her voice. "Don't touch me. Don't ever touch me like that. Do you hear me?" She panted, trying to swallow the bile that came up her throat.

"I know," he said, holding his hand close to her back but not touching her. "I know that. I'm sorry."

Lena grabbed for the door handle, missing it several times because her hands were shaking so hard. She stepped out of the car, taking gulps of air into her lungs. The heat enveloped her, and she squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to make the connection between the heat and her dreams of floating on the ocean.

She heard a familiar friendly voice behind her. "Hey there, Hank," Dave Fine, the pastor of the church, said.

"Good morning, sir," Hank returned, his voice kinder than it ever was when he spoke to Lena. She had heard Hank use that tone before, but only with Sibyl. For Lena, there had always been nothing but sharp words of criticism.

Lena concentrated on getting her breathing back under control before she turned around. She could not smile, but she felt the corners of her mouth rise slightly in what must have seemed like a pained grimace to the pastor.

"Good morning, detective," Dave Fine said, the preacher-compassion in his voice getting under her skin worse than anything Hank had said in the car. For the last four months, Hank had been pushing Dave Fine on Lena, trying to get her to talk to the preacher. Pastor Fine was also a psychologist, or so he said, and saw patients in the evenings. Lena did not want to talk to the man about the weather, let alone what had happened to her. It wasn't that Fine was the Antichrist, it was that of all the people Lena could possibly talk to, a preacher would be the last one she would pick. It was like Hank had forgotten exactly what had happened to her in that dark room.

She gave him a curt "Pastor," walking past him, her purse tight to her chest like an old lady at a rummage sale.

She could feel his eyes on her back, hear Hank make his apologies as she walked away from them. Lena felt a flush of shame for being rude to Fine. It wasn't his fault-he was a nice enough man-but there was really nothing she could say to make them understand.

She quickened her step, her eyes staring straight ahead as she walked toward the church. A crowd of people milling around the entrance parted for her as she took the steps one at a time, forcing herself to move slowly and not run into the church like her body ached to do. Everyone except for Brad Stephens, who grinned at her like a puppy, found something better to do as she ascended the stairs. Matt Hogan, who was Frank Wallace's partner now that Lena had been assigned to patrol, focused on lighting his cigarette as if he were attempting nuclear fusion in the palm of his hand.

Lena kept her chin raised, her eyes averted so that no one would talk to her. Still, she could feel them staring at her, and she knew they would start whispering as soon as they thought she was out of earshot.

The people were the worst part about going to church. The whole town knew what had happened to her. They knew she had been kidnapped and raped. They had read every detail of the assault in the paper. They had followed her recovery and return home from the hospital the way they followed their soap operas and football games. Lena could not go to the store without someone trying to look at the scars on her hands. She could not walk through a crowded room without someone casting a sad, pathetic look her way. As if they could understand what she had been through. As if they knew what it was like to be strong and invincible one day and completely powerless the next. And the next.

The doors to the church were closed to keep the cold air in and the heat out. Lena reached for the handle just as one of the deacons did, and their hands brushed. She jerked back as if she had touched fire, waiting for the door to open, keeping her eyes cast down. Walking through the foyer and then into the chapel, she stared at the red carpet, the white molding trimming out the bottom of the pews lining the large room, so that no one would think to talk to her.

Inside, the church was simple by Baptist standards, and small considering the size of the town. Most of the older residents attended the Primitive Baptist on Stokes Street, their tithes going with them. Crescent Baptist Church was about thirty years old, and they hosted singles parties and divorce recovery groups and Parents Without Partners get-togethers in the basement of the small chapel. Crescent was not about a vengeful God. Sermons were about forgiveness and love, charity and peace. Pastor Fine would never admonish his congregation for their sins or threaten them with hell and brimstone. This was a place of joy, or so the church bulletin said. Lena was not surprised at all that Hank had chosen it. His A.A. meetings were held in the basement, right beside the parenting class for teens.

Lena took a pew close to the front, knowing Hank would want to be close to the pastor for his usual Sunday dose of forgiveness. Dave Fine's wife and two kids were in front of her, but thankfully they didn't turn around. Lena crossed her legs, smoothing out her pants until she felt the woman down at the other end of the pew staring at her hands. Lena crossed her arms and looked up at the stage. The pulpit sat in the center, large velvet-covered chairs fanning out from it on either side. Behind this was the choir loft, the organ to the side. Its pipes climbed the walls like a vertical rib cage on either side of the baptismal. In the center of it all was Jesus, his arms spread out, his feet crossed one over the other.

Lena made herself look away as Hank slid into the pew beside her. She checked her watch. The nine-thirty service would start soon. It would last an hour, then Sunday school would be another half hour. They would leave around eleven, then go to the Waffle House off Route 2 where Hank would eat lunch and Lena would nurse a cup of coffee. They would be home by noon. Lena would clean the house then work on a couple of reports. At one-thirty, she was expected at the station to go over the Jenny Weaver case. The briefing would take about three hours if she was lucky, then it would be time to come home and get ready for the Sunday potluck and the evening service. After that, there was some kind of choir concert that would last until around nine-thirty. By the time they got home, it would be well past time for Lena to go to bed.

She exhaled slowly as she thought this through, inordinately relieved to know that today, at least, she had things to do. Her hours were spoken for.

"About to start," Hank whispered. He took a hymnal out of the rack in front of them as the organ music started. He fidgeted with the book, then said, "Pastor Fine says you can come by tomorrow after work."

Lena pretended not to hear him, but her mental clock made a note of the appointment; at least it would be something to do. At least in agreeing to see him it would keep Hank in town a little longer.

"Lee?" he tried. Finally, he gave up as the choir started its hymn.

Lena stood with the crowd, Hank's baritone vibrating in her ear as he sang "Nearer My God to Thee." Lena did not bother to mouth the words. She traced her tongue along her front teeth, following Hank's finger along the page as he kept his place in the song. Finally, she looked back at the cross. Lena felt a lightness, an eerie kind of peace, staring at the crucifixion. As much as she wanted to deny it, there was something comforting about its familiarity.

Chapter Five

Sara kept her dark green BMW Z3 in second gear as she drove through downtown Heartsdale. The car had been an impulse buy insofar as any purchase that ran over thirty thousand dollars could be considered impulsive. At the time Sara bought it, the ink was just drying on her divorce papers, and she had wanted something impractical and a little flashy. The Z3 more than fit the bill. Unfortunately, as soon as she drove the thing back from the Macon dealership, Sara realized that a car was not going to make her feel better. As a matter of fact, she had felt conspicuous and silly, especially when her family was through with her. Two years later, Sara still sometimes felt a tinge of embarrassment when she saw the car parked in her driveway.

Billy, one of her two greyhounds, rode in the passenger's seat, his head ducked down because the clearance in the small sports car was too low for him. He licked his lips occasionally, but was quiet for the most part, keeping his eyes closed as the cold air from the vents pushed back his pointy ears. His lips tugged up a bit at the edges, as if he was smiling, enjoying the ride. Sara watched him out of the corner of her eye, wishing life could just once be that simple for her.

Main Street was fairly empty, since none of the shops stayed open on Sunday. Except for the hardware store and the five-and-dime, most of them were closed by noon on Saturday. Sara had been born here, right down the street at the Grant Medical Center back when it was the only hospital in the region. She knew every part of this street like a favorite book.

Sara made a slow turn at the college gates and coasted into her parking space in front of the Heartsdale Children's Clinic. Despite the fact that she had the air on high, the back of her legs stuck to the leather car seat as she opened the door. She braced herself for the heat, but it was still overwhelming. Even Billy paused before jumping out of the car. He looked around the parking lot, probably regretting that he had come along with Sara instead of staying in the cool house with Bob.

Sara used the back of her hand to wipe her forehead. She had thrown on a pair of cutoff jeans, a sleeveless undershirt, and one of Jeffrey's old dress shirts this morning, but nothing could keep the heat and humidity at bay. Rain, when it deigned to come, was about as useless as throwing water on a grease fire. Some days, it was hard for Sara to remember what it was like to be cold.

"Come on," Sara told the dog, tugging at his retractable leash.

As usual, Billy ignored her. She let the leash out and he showed her his skinny behind as he loped toward the back of the building. There were scars on his hind legs and rear end from where the gates had popped him one too many times at the racetrack. It broke Sara's heart every time she saw them.

Billy took his time doing his business, lazily lifting his leg against the tree closest to the building. The college owned the property behind the clinic, and they kept it heavily forested. There were trails back there that the students jogged along when it was not too hot to breathe. Sara had watched the Savannah news this morning and learned that they were advising people not to go outside in the heat unless they absolutely had to.

Sara checked her key ring and found the one for the back door. By the time she had it open, sweat was trickling down her neck and back. There was a bowl by the door, and she used the outside hose to fill it while Billy scratched his back on the grass.

Inside the clinic was just as hot as out, mostly because Dr. Barney, who had been a better pediatrician than architect, had insisted on lining the south-facing front wall of the building with heat-trapping glass brick. Sara could not imagine what the temperature must be in the waiting room. The back of the building seemed hot enough to boil water.

Sara did not have enough saliva left to whistle. She held the door open, waiting for Billy to amble in. After a long drink of water, he finally came. Sara watched as he stopped in the middle of the hallway, glanced around, then fell onto the floor with a snort. Looking at the lazy animal, it was hard to imagine the years he had spent racing at the track over in Ebro. Sara leaned down to pet him and remove his leash before heading back to her office.

The layout at the clinic was typical of most pediatricians' offices. A long L-shaped hallway lined the length of the building, with three exam rooms on either side. Two exam rooms were at the back of the L, though one of them was used for storage. In the center of the hallway was a nurses' station that served as the central brain of the clinic. There was a computer that held current patient information and a row of floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets where current charts were kept. There was another chart room behind the waiting room that was filled with information on patients dating back to 1969. One day, they would have to be purged, but Sara did not have that kind of time and she could not bring herself to ask the staff to do something she herself was not prepared to do.

Sara's tennis shoes snicked as she walked across the clean tile floor. She did not bother to turn on the lights. Sara knew this place in the dark, but that was not the only reason she left them off. The flickering of a fluorescent light, the click of brightness as the tubes came to life, would seem intrusive considering the task ahead.

By the time she reached her office across from the nurses' station she had already unbuttoned her overshirt and tied it around her waist. She wasn't wearing a bra, but she did not expect to run into anyone who would care.

Pictures of patients lined her office walls. Initially, a grateful mother had given Sara a school snapshot of a child. Sara had stuck it on the wall, then a day later another photo had come, and she had taped it beside the first. Twelve years had passed since then and now photographs spilled into the hallway and the staff bathroom. Sara could remember them all: their runny noses and earaches, their school crushes and family problems. Brad Stephens's senior picture was somewhere near the shower in the bathroom. The photo of a boy named Jimmy Powell, a patient who just a few months ago had been diagnosed with leukemia, had been moved by Sara's phone so that she could remember him every day. He was in the hospital now, and Sara knew in her gut that within the next few months another patient of hers would be put into the ground.

Jenny Weaver's picture was not on the wall. Her mother had never brought one in. Sara only had the girl's chart to help reconstruct their history together.

The filing cabinet drawer groaned as Sara yanked it open. The unit was as old as Dr. Barney and just as difficult. No amount of WD-40 would fix it.

"Crap," Sara hissed as the cabinet tilted forward. The top drawer was full to overflowing, and she had to use her free hand to keep the whole cabinet from falling.

Quickly, Sara ran her fingers along the file tabs, reading off Weaver on her second run through. She pushed the cabinet back, slamming the drawer into the unit. The sound was loud in the small office. Sara was tempted to open it and slam it again, just to make some noise.

She snapped on her desk lamp as she sat, her sweaty legs skidding on the vinyl seat. Probably it would have been wiser to take the chart home. At the very least, it would be more comfortable. Sara did not want comfort, though. She considered it a small penance to sit in the heat and try to find what she had missed over the last three years.

Her wire-rimmed reading glasses were in the breast pocket of her shirt, and Sara felt a moment of panic, thinking she had broken them when she sat down. They were bent, but otherwise fine. She slipped on her glasses, took a deep breath, and opened the chart.

Jenny Weaver had first come to the clinic three years ago. At ten years old, the child's weight had been within normal ranges in relation to her height. Her first ailment had been a persistent sore throat that a round of antibiotics had evidently cured. There was a follow-up notation in the chart, and from what Sara could barely decipher from her own handwriting, Dottie Weaver had been contacted a week later by phone to make sure Jenny was responding to treatment. She had been.

About two years ago, Jenny had started to put on weight. Unfortunately, this was not uncommon these days, especially for girls like Jenny, who had gotten her first menstrual period shortly after her eleventh birthday. Their lives were more sedentary, and fast food was more readily available than it should be. Hormones in meat and dairy products helped the process along. Case studies in some of the journals Sara read were already dealing with ways to treat girls who entered puberty as early as eight years old.

Sara continued reading through Jenny's chart. Shortly after the weight gain began, Jenny had been diagnosed with a urinary tract infection. Three months later, the girl had come in with a yeast infection. According to Sara's notes, there was nothing suspicious about this at the time. In retrospect, Sara questioned her judgment. The infections could have been the beginning of a pattern. She turned to the next page, noting the date. Jenny had come in a year later with another urinary tract infection. A year was a long time, but Sara pulled out a sheet of paper and made notes of the dates, as well as the two other visits Jenny had made after, both for sore throats. Perhaps Jenny's parents shared custody. They could trace the dates to see if they corresponded with visits to her father.

Sara set down her pen, trying to recall what she knew about Jenny Weaver's father. Mothers were more likely to bring their children into the clinic, and as far as Sara could remember she had never met Jenny's father. Some women, especially women who were recently divorced, would volunteer information about their husbands as if their children were not in the room. Sara was always uncomfortable when this happened, and she usually managed to cut it off before it could really start, but some women talked over her, bringing up the kind of personal information that a child should never know about either parent. Dottie Weaver had never done this. She was talkative enough, even chatty, but Dottie had never disparaged her ex-husband at the clinic, even though Sara had gathered from the sporadic way the single mother paid her insurance balance that money was tight.

Sara's glasses slipped up as she rubbed her eyes. She glanced at the clock on the wall. Sunday lunch at her parents' was at eleven, then Jeffrey was expecting her at the station around one-thirty.

Sara shook her head, skipping over any thoughts of Jeffrey. A headache had settled into the base of her neck and the dull throbbing made it difficult to concentrate. She took off her glasses and cleaned them with her shirttail, hoping this might help her see things more clearly.

"Hello?" Sara called, throwing open the door to her parents' house. The cold air inside brought welcome goose bumps to her clammy skin.

"In here," her mother said from the kitchen.

Sara dropped her briefcase by the door and kicked off her tennis shoes before walking to the back of the house. Billy trotted in front of her, giving Sara a hard look, as if to ask why they had spent all that time in the hot clinic when they could have been here in the air-conditioning. To punctuate his displeasure, he collapsed onto his side halfway down the hallway so that Sara had to step over him to get to the back of the house.

When Sara walked into the kitchen, Cathy was standing at the stove frying chicken. Her mother was still dressed in her church clothes, but had taken off her shoes and panty-hose. A white apron that read don't mess with the chef was tied loosely around her waist.

"Hey, Mama," Sara offered, kissing her cheek. Sara was the tallest person in her family, and she could rest her chin on her mother's head without straining her neck. Tessa had inherited Cathy Linton's petite build and blonde hair. Sara had inherited her pragmatism.

Cathy gave Sara a disapproving look. "Did you forget to put on a bra this morning?"

Sara felt her face redden as she untied the shirt she was wearing around her waist. She slipped it on over her T-shirt, offering, "I was in the clinic. I didn't think I'd be there long enough to turn on the air."

"It's too hot to be frying," Cathy countered. "But your father wanted chicken."

Sara got the lesson on sacrificing things for your family, but answered instead, "You should have told him to go to Chick's."

"He doesn't need to eat that trash."

Sara let this go, sighing much as Billy had. She buttoned the shirt to the top, giving her mother a tight smile as she asked, "Better?"

Cathy nodded, taking a paper napkin off the counter and wiping her forehead. "It's not even noon and it's already ninety degrees out."

"I know," Sara answered, tucking a foot underneath her as she sat on the kitchen stool. She watched her mother move around the kitchen, glad for the normalcy. Cathy was wearing a linen dress with thin, vertical green stripes. Her blonde hair, which was only slightly streaked with gray, was pulled up behind her head in a loose ponytail, much the same way Sara wore hers.

Cathy blew her nose into the napkin, then threw it in the trash. "Tell me about last night," she said, returning to the stove.

Sara shrugged. "Jeffrey didn't have a choice."

"I never doubted that. I want to know how you're holding up."

Sara considered the question. The truth was, she was not holding up well at all.

Cathy seemed to sense this. She slipped a fresh piece of battered chicken into the hot oil and turned to face her daughter. "I called you last night to check in with you."

Sara stared at her mother, forcing herself not to look away. "I was at Jeffrey's."

"I figured that, but your father drove by his house just to make sure."

"Daddy did?" Sara asked, surprised. "Why?"

"We thought you would come here," Cathy answered. "When you weren't at home, that was the obvious place to check."

Sara crossed her arms. "Don't you think that's a little intrusive?"

"Not nearly as intrusive as childbirth," Cathy snapped, pointing at Sara with her fork. "Next time, call."

After almost forty years, Cathy could still make Sara feel like a child. Sara looked out the window, feeling as if she had been caught doing something wrong.

"Sara?"

Sara mumbled a quiet, "Yes, ma'am."

"I worry about you."

"I know, Mama."

"Is everything okay?"

Sara felt her color rise again, but for a different reason. "Where's Tessa?"

"She's not down yet."

Tessa lived over the garage of their parents' home. Sara's house was just a mile down the road, but that was far enough to give her some sense of independence. Tessa did not seem to mind the closeness. She worked with Eddie, their father, in the family's plumbing business, so it was easier for her to walk down the stairs and report for work every morning. Besides, part of Tessa was still a teenage girl. It had not hit her yet that one day she would want a house of her own. Maybe it never would.

Cathy flipped the chicken, tapping her fork on the edge of the pan. She slipped it into the spoon rest, then turned to Sara, her arms crossed. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," Sara answered. "I mean, other than last night with the girl. And the baby. I guess you heard about the baby."

"It was all over the church before we even walked through the doors."

"Well"-Sara shrugged-"it was very hard."

"I can't even imagine how you do that job, baby."

"Sometimes, I can't either."

Cathy stood, waiting for the rest. "And?" she prompted.

Sara rubbed the back of her neck. "At Jeffrey's…" she began. "It just didn't work out."

"Didn't work out?" her mother asked.

"I mean, didn't work out as in…" Sara gestured with her hands, encouraging her mother to fill in the rest.

"Oh," Cathy finally said. "Physically?"

Sara blushed again, which was answer enough.

"Well, that's not a complete surprise, is it? After what happened?"

"He was so…" Sara looked for the right words. "He was… abrupt. I mean, I tried…" Again, she left out the details.

"Is this the first time that's happened?"

Sara shrugged. It was the first time it had happened with her, but who knew about Jeffrey's other conquests. "The part that was awful…" Sara began, then stopped. "As long as I've known him, I have never seen him that mad. He was furious. I thought he was going to hit something."

"I remember once when your father couldn't-"

"Mama," Sara stopped her. It was hard enough talking to her mother about this without bringing Eddie into the picture. Not to mention that Jeffrey would kill Sara if he knew that she had told anyone his performance had been less than stellar. Jeffrey's sexual prowess was as important to him as his reputation as a good cop.

"You brought it up," Cathy reminded her, turning back to the chicken. She snatched a paper towel off the roll and lined a plate to put the chicken on.

"Okay," Sara answered. "What should I do?"

"Do whatever he wants," Cathy said. "Or nothing at all." She picked up another piece of chicken. "Are you sure you even want to bother at this point?"

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning, do you want to be with him or not? Maybe that's what it boils down to. You've been dancing around this thing with Jeffrey since the divorce." She tapped the fork on the pan. "As your father would say, it's time for you either to shit or get off the pot."

The front door opened, then banged shut, and Sara heard two thumping noises as Tessa kicked off her shoes.

Tessa yelled, "Mama?"

"In the kitchen," Cathy answered. She gave Sara a pointed look. "You know what I mean?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Tessa stomped her way down the hall, mumbling, "Stupid dog," as she obviously stepped over Billy. The kitchen door bumped open, and Tessa came into the kitchen with an irritated expression on her face. She was wearing an old pink bathrobe with a green T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts underneath. Her face was pale, and she looked a bit sickly.

Cathy asked, "Tessie?"

Tessa shook her head as she walked to the refrigerator and opened the freezer door, saying, "I just need coffee."

Cathy ignored this, and kissed her on the forehead to take her temperature. "You feel warm."

"It's a hundred freaking degrees outside," Tessa whined, standing as close to the freezer as she could without actually getting in. "Of course I'm warm." As if to reinforce this, she flapped her robe open and closed several times to generate some cool air. "Jesus, I'm moving somewhere where they get real seasons. I swear I am. I don't care how funny they talk or that they don't know how to make grits. There has got to be a better alternative."

"Is that all that's wrong?" Sara asked, putting her hand on Tessa's forehead. As a doctor, Sara knew this was about as effective a gauge for a fever as Cathy's kiss, but Tessa was her baby sister. She had to do something.

Tessa pulled away. "I'm premenstrual, I'm hot, and I need chocolate." She stuck out her chin. "Do you see this?" she asked, pointing to a large pimple.

"I don't see how we could miss it," Cathy said, closing the refrigerator door.

Sara laughed, and Tessa popped her on the arm.

"Wonder what Daddy's gonna call it?" Sara teased, slapping her back. When his daughters were teenagers, Eddie had taken great delight in drawing attention to their facial blemishes. Sara still felt a flush of shame when she remembered the time her father had introduced her to one of his friends as his oldest daughter Sara, and Bobo, her new pimple.

Tessa was phrasing a response when the phone rang. She picked it up on the first ring.

Two seconds passed before Tessa hissed a curse and yelled, "I got it, Dad," as Eddie obviously picked up the extension upstairs.

Sara smiled, thinking this could have been any Sunday from the last twenty years. All that was missing was their father walking in, making some silly comment about how happy he was to see all three of his girls barefoot and in the kitchen.

Tessa said, "Hold on," then put her hand over the mouth of the receiver. She turned to Sara. "Are you here?"

"Who is it?" Sara asked, but she could guess the answer.

"Who do you think?" Tessa snapped. She did not wait for a response. Instead, she said into the phone, "Hold on, Jeffrey. Here she is."

Chapter Six

Ben Walker, Grant County 's chief of police before Jeffrey, had kept his office just off the briefing room in the back of the station. Every day, Ben had settled himself behind the large desk that almost filled the entire room, and anyone who wanted to talk to him had to sit on the other side of this mammoth hunk of wood, their knees grazing the desk, their backs firm to the wall. In the mornings, the men-and they were all men then-on the senior squad were called in to hear their assignments for the day, then they left and the chief shut his door. Nobody saw him again until quitting time, when Ben got in his car and drove two blocks up the street to the diner where he ate his supper.

The first thing Jeffrey did when he took over the station was throw out Ben's desk. The oak monstrosity had to be disassembled to get it through the door. Jeffrey made Ben's old office the storage room, and took the small office at the front of the squad room as his own. One quiet weekend, Jeffrey installed a picture window so he could look out on the squad and, more important, so they could see him. There were blinds on the window, but he seldom closed them. Jeffrey made a point of leaving his office door open whenever possible.

He stared out at the empty squad room, wondering what his people would make of Jenny Weaver's shooting. Jeffrey felt an overwhelming sense of guilt for what he had done, even though his mind kept telling him he had not been given a choice. Every time he thought about it Jeffrey felt like he couldn't breathe right, like not enough air was getting to his lungs. He could not let go of the obvious questions in his mind: Had he made the right decision? Would Jenny have really killed that kid in cold blood? Sara seemed to think so. Last night, she had said something about having two dead teenagers today instead of one if Jeffrey had not stopped the girl. Of course, Sara had said a lot of other things last night that had not exactly been a comfort.

Jeffrey pressed his hands together in front of his face, leaning his head against his thumbs as he thought about Sara. Sometimes, she could be too analytical for her own good. One of the sexiest things about Sara was her mouth. Too bad she didn't know when to shut up and use it for something more helpful to Jeffrey than talking.

"Chief?" Frank Wallace knocked on the door.

"Come in," Jeffrey answered.

"Hot outside," Frank said, as if to explain why he wasn't wearing a tie. He was dressed in a dark black suit that had a cheap shine to it. The top button of his dress shirt was undone, and Jeffrey could see his yellowed white undershirt underneath. As usual, Frank reeked of cigarette smoke. He had probably been outside, smoking by the back door, giving Jeffrey some time before he came in for their meeting. Why anyone would voluntarily hold a burning cigarette in this kind of heat, Jeffrey would never know.

Frank could have had Ben Walker's job if he had asked. Of course, the old cop was too smart for that. Frank had worked in Grant County his entire career, and he had seen the way the cities were changing. Once, Frank had told Jeffrey that being chief of police was a young man's job, but Jeffrey had thought then as he did now that what Frank meant was it was a foolish man's job. During Jeffrey's first year in Grant, he had figured out that no one in his right mind would sign up for this kind of pressure. By then, it had been too late. He had already met Sara.

"Busy weekend," Frank said, handing Jeffrey a weekend status report. The file was thicker than usual.

"Yeah." Jeffrey indicated a chair for the man to sit down.

"Alleged break-in at the cleaners. Maria told you about that one? Then there's a couple or three DUIs, usual shit at the college, drunk and disorderly. Couple of domestic situations, no charges filed."

Jeffrey listened half-heartedly as Frank ran down the list. It was long, and daunting. There was no telling what a larger city dealt with this weekend if Grant had been hit so hard. Usually, things were much quieter. Of course, the heat brought out violence in people. Jeffrey had known that as long as he had been a cop.

"So…" Frank wrapped it up: "That's about it."

"Good," Jeffrey answered, taking the report. He tapped his finger on the papers, then with little fanfare slid Jenny Weaver's file across the desk. It sat there like a white elephant.

Frank gave the file the same skeptical look he would give an astrology report, then reluctantly picked it up and started to read. Frank had been on the job long enough to think he had seen everything. The shocked expression on his face belied this as he examined the photographs Sara had taken.

"Mother of God," Frank mumbled, reaching into his coat pocket. He pulled out his cigarettes, then, probably remembering where he was, put them back. He closed the file without finishing it.

Jeffrey said, "She didn't give birth to the child."

"Yeah." Frank cleared his throat, crossing his legs uncomfortably. He was fifty-eight years old and had already put in enough time to retire with a nice pension. Why he kept working the job was a mystery. Cases like this must make Frank wonder why he kept showing up every day, too.

"What is this?" Frank asked. "Good Lord in heaven."

"Female Genital Mutilation," Jeffrey told him. "It's an African or Middle Eastern thing." He held up his hand, stopping Frank's next question. "I know what you're thinking. They're Southern Baptist, not Islamic."

"Where'd she get the idea, then?"

"That's what we're going to find out."

Frank shook his head, like he was trying to erase the image from his mind.

Jeffrey said, "Dr. Linton is on her way in to do the briefing," feeling foolish for using Sara's title even as he said it. Frank played poker with Eddie Linton. He had watched Sara grow up.

"The kid gonna be here, too?" Frank asked, meaning Lena.

"Of course," Jeffrey answered, meeting him squarely in the eye. Frank frowned, making it obvious that he did not approve.

For everything Frank was-sexist, probably racist, certainly ageist-he cared for Lena. He had a daughter about Lena 's age, and from the moment Jeffrey had partnered her with Frank, the old cop had protested. Every week Frank had come in, asking for a change in assignment, and every week Jeffrey had told him to get used to it. Part of the rea-son the city had brought in Jeffrey, an outsider, was to drag the force out of the Stone Age. Jeffrey had handpicked Lena Adams from the police academy and groomed her from day one to be the first female detective on the squad.

Jeffrey did not know what to do with her now. He had put Lena with Brad Stephens on a temporary basis until her hands healed, hoping the downtime would help her ease back into her job. Just last month she had gotten a clearance from her doctor to return to active duty, but Lena had yet to ask for her old assignment back. For Frank's part, he could not even look her in the eye when she said hello to him. Jeffrey had heard Frank say a million times that women did not belong on the force, and Frank seemed to take Lena 's attack as confirmation of this.

Logically, Jeffrey did not agree with Frank's assessment. Women cops were good for the force. Ideally, the makeup of the force should reflect that of the community. Lena had brought a thoughtfulness to the job. She was better with certain types of perpetrators and knew how to handle female victims of crime, something that had been missing in the senior squad prior to her promotion. What's more, having a female detective had encouraged other women to join the ranks. There were fifteen women on patrol now. When Ben Walker had left the force, the only women in its employ had been secretaries. Despite all of this progress, when Jeffrey thought about what Lena had gone through, what had been done to her, he wanted to lock her up in her house and stand outside with a shotgun in case anyone ever tried to hurt her again.

Frank interrupted his thoughts, asking, "There gonna be some kind of internal investigation on this thing?" He paused, picking at the corner of the case file. "The Weaver shooting, I mean."

Jeffrey nodded, sitting back in his chair. "I talked to the mayor this morning. I want you to take Brad and Lena 's statements. Buddy Conford's the city attorney on this one."

"He's a public defender," Frank pointed out.

"Yeah, well, not on this one," Jeffrey told him. "There's some concern about the girl's mother. The city has an insurance policy for this kind of thing. Maybe they'll settle it out of court. I dunno." Jeffrey shrugged. "She was threatening someone with a gun and all. It's just kind of tricky, you know?"

"Yeah," Frank answered. "I know." He waited a few beats, then asked, "You okay with this, Chief?"

Jeffrey felt some of his resolve falter. The sinking, lost feeling he had experienced last night with Sara came back, and he felt a heaviness in his chest. He had never shot anyone, let alone killed a little girl. His mind kept playing back the scene with Jenny, picking apart the clock, trying to find the place where his negotiations had gone sour. There had to be something else he could have said or done that would have made her put down that gun. There had to be an alternative.

"Chief?" Frank said. "For what it's worth, Brad and Lena will back you a hundred percent. You know that, right?"

"Yeah," Jeffrey answered, not taking comfort in Frank's words because he knew that Brad and Lena would back him even if they did not think what Jeffrey had done was right. There were gray areas in law enforcement, but when it came down to the wire, cops always backed cops. Brad would do this because at some level he worshipped Jeffrey. Lena would do it because she felt she owed Jeffrey something for letting her back on the job.

For Jeffrey, this was hardly a consolation.

Both men were silent. Jeffrey turned his head, looking at the shelves lining the far wall of his office. Shooting trophies were there, awarded for his marksmanship. An old football from when he played for Auburn was on the bottom shelf. Pictures of guys he had worked with on the job in Grant as well as back in Birmingham were alongside a couple of snapshots of Sara he had taken on their honeymoon. He had put these up recently, when they started dating again. Now, he wasn't so sure about wanting the pictures in his office, let alone wanting Sara in his life. Jeffrey still could not get over how distant she had been last night, tensing up when he touched her, telling him what to do. Like he didn't know how to do what he was doing. Like he hadn't done it hundreds of times before with other women who were a hell of a lot more receptive than Sara had been.

Frank turned around in his chair when the half-doors separating the squad room from the reception area clapped open. Sara walked through, her briefcase in one hand. She was dressed in a light blue dress that looked like a long T-shirt. Jeffrey could see she had decided to go with tennis shoes without socks to complete the ensemble. She probably hadn't even shaved her legs.

Both men watched as Sara made her way to the office. Her hair was a mess and Jeffrey wondered if she had even bothered to comb it. Sara had never been the kind of woman who was interested in high fashion and she seldom wore makeup. Sometimes this was sexy, sometimes it made her look sloppy, like she was more interested in being a doctor than being a woman. As she got closer to them, he could see that her glasses were crooked on her face. For some reason, this irritated him more than anything else.

Frank stood when she entered the room, so Jeffrey followed suit.

"Hi," she said, smiling nervously. Jeffrey was glad she was uncomfortable.

"Hey there," Frank said, buttoning his jacket.

Sara smiled at Frank, then said, "I've called Nick Shelton," referring to Grant County 's Georgia Bureau of Investigations field agent. "I asked him to track any cases involving this kind of mutilation. He said he'd have something Wednesday at the latest."

When Jeffrey did not address this, Frank supplied, "Good thinking."

"And," Sara continued, "I called around to the hospitals. Nobody came in last night seeking postlabor treatment. I left the number here at the station in case they get someone in."

Frank pulled at the collar of his shirt. "So, you think there's any way the girl could have done this to herself? This circumcision thing?"

"God, no." Sara seemed to bristle at this. "And, it's not circumcision," she told him. "This is tantamount to castration. Her clitoris and labia minora were completely scraped away, then what was left was sewn together with thread."

"Oh," Frank said, obviously uncomfortable with this information.

Sara pursed her lips. "It's the same as cutting off a man's penis."

Frank looked uncomfortably from Jeffrey to Sara, then back again.

"Anyway." Sara gestured to her briefcase. "I'm ready to start the briefing."

"That's been postponed," Jeffrey said, hearing the hard tone to his voice but unable to do anything about it. When he had called to ask Sara to come in early, he had not mentioned why. He told her, "Dottie Weaver will be here in about fifteen minutes. I want to get her out of here as soon as I can."

"Oh," she said, surprised. "Okay. I guess I can do some paperwork at the clinic. You think a couple of hours will do it?"

He shook his head no. "I want you to sit in on the interview."

Sara gave him a careful look. "I'm not a cop."

" Lena is," he told her. "She'll be leading the interview. I want you there because she knows you."

She tucked her hand into her hip. " Lena or Dottie?"

Frank cleared his throat. "I got some calls to make," he said, giving Sara a polite nod before leaving the room.

After he was gone, Sara turned to Jeffrey, giving him a questioning look.

He asked, "Is that a nightgown?"

"What?"

"What you're wearing," he said, indicating her dress. "It looks like a nightgown."

Sara laughed uncomfortably. "No," she said, as if he was leaving out some part of the joke.

"You could have worn something more professional," he said, thinking about what she had worn last night. Her sweat pants and a ratty old T-shirt didn't exactly help the situation. And her legs had felt hairier than his.

He asked, "Would it kill you to dress up a little bit?"

Sara lowered her voice, the way she did when she got angry. "Is there some reason you're talking to me like you're my mother?"

He felt a flash of anger that was so intense he knew not to open his mouth and say what wanted to come out.

"Jeff," Sara said, "what is going on?"

He walked past her and slammed the door shut. "Would it kill you to do me this one favor?"

"Favor?" She shook her head, as if he had started talking gibberish.

"Sit in on the interview," he reminded her. "With Weaver."

Sara exhaled sharply. "What could I possibly say to her?"

"Never mind," he answered. To give himself something to do, he closed the blinds. "Just forget about it."

"Just tell me what you want me to do," she said, her voice irritatingly reasonable. "Do you want me to go home and change? Do you want me to leave you alone?"

He turned around, saying, "I want you to stop breaking my balls, is what I want you to do."

Sara tucked in her chin. It seemed to be her turn to hold back something she wanted to say.

He raised his eyebrows, prompting her to speak. "What?" he demanded, knowing he was pushing her, wanting a fight to release some of the anger he felt.

Sara took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. "I don't understand why you're so angry at me."

Jeffrey did not answer.

She smoothed down his tie with the back of her fingers, then put her palm to his chest. "Jeff, please. Just tell me what you want me to do."

Words failed him. He turned away from her and then, because there was nothing else for him to do, he twisted the wand to open the blinds again. He felt Sara's hand on his shoulder.

She said, "It's all right."

"I know that," he snapped, but he didn't. He felt like his brain was on fire, and every time he blinked all he could see was Jenny Weaver's head jerking back as the bullet cut through her neck.

Sara put her arms around him, then pressed her lips against the back of his neck. "It's okay," she whispered against his neck, and he felt the coolness of her breath calming him. She kissed his neck again, holding her lips there for what seemed like a long time. His body started to relax, and Jeffrey wondered why she hadn't done this last night. Then he remembered that she had.

She told him again, "It's all right."

He felt calm for the first time that morning, like he could breathe again. It felt so good that for just a second he thought he might do something really stupid, like cry or, worse, tell Sara that he loved her.

He asked, "You gonna sit in on the interview or not?"

She let her hands drop, and he could tell this was not the reaction she had been hoping for. He looked at her, trying to think of something to say. Nothing came to mind.

Finally, she nodded once, telling him, "I'll do whatever you want me to do."

Jeffrey stood in the observation room, watching through the one-way mirror as Sara comforted Dottie Weaver. He had never been able to stay mad at Sara for long, mostly because Sara would not allow it.

Dottie Weaver was a largeish woman with dark brown hair and olive colored skin. Her hair looked long, but she kept it in a neat bun on top of her head. The style was a bit dated, but it seemed to suit her. She had what Jeffrey thought of as an older face, the kind where the person looks the same at ten as she does at forty. Her cheeks were more jowls, and she carried about twenty pounds more on her than she should have. There were deep creases in her forehead above her nose, which gave her a stern look, even when she was crying.

Jeffrey glanced at Lena, who was standing beside him with her arms crossed over her chest. She was watching Sara and Dottie with her usual focused intensity. Here they were, the two most emotionally raw people in the station, responsible for finding out what had happened the night before. Jeffrey knew then that he had asked Sara to do this for selfish reasons. She would act as his sanity.

Jeffrey turned to Lena, telling her, "I'm using you."

She did not react, but that was hardly uncommon. Six months ago, Lena Adams would have been rabid for this interview. She would have strutted through the station, flaunting the fact that she had been chosen by the chief. Now, she just nodded.

"Because you're a woman," he clarified. "And because of what happened to you."

She looked at him, and there was an emptiness to her eyes that struck him to his core. Ten years ago, at the training academy in Macon, Jeffrey had watched Lena fly through the obstacle course like a bat out of hell. At five-four and around a hundred twenty pounds, she was the smallest recruit in her group, but she made up for it by sheer force of will. Her tenacity and drive had caught his attention that day. Looking at her now, he wondered if that Lena would ever show herself again.

Lena broke eye contact, staring back at Sara. "Yeah, I guess she'll feel sorry for me," she said, her tone flat. It unnerved him the way she did not seem to feel anything. He even preferred her intense anger to the automaton Lena seemed to be lately.

"Go slowly," he advised, handing her the case file. "We need as much information as we can get."

"Anything else?" she asked. They could have been discussing the weather.

Jeffrey told her no and she left without another word. He turned back to the mirror, waiting for Lena to enter the interview room. When the young detective had returned to her job, Jeffrey had told her she would have to get some kind of therapy to deal with what had happened. As far as he knew, Lena had not. He should ask her about this. Jeffrey knew that. He just did not know how.

The door creaked as Lena opened it. She walked into the room, her hands tucked into the pockets of her dress slacks. She was wearing tan chinos with a dark blue button-down dress shirt. Her shoulder-length brown hair was tucked back neatly behind her ears. At thirty-three years old, she had finally grown into her face. Lena had always been attractive, but in the last couple of years she had developed a womanliness that was not lost on the senior squad.

Jeffrey looked away, uncomfortable with these thoughts. After what she had been through, it felt wrong for him to be considering Lena this way.

"Mrs. Weaver?" Lena asked. She extended her hand, and Jeffrey cringed along with Dottie Weaver as they both stared at Lena 's open palm. The scar in the center was horrible to see. Sara was the only one who did not seem to react.

Lena withdrew her hand, clenching it by her side as if she was embarrassed. "I'm Detective Lena Adams. I can't tell you how sorry I am for your loss."

"Thank you," Dottie managed, her Midwestern twang a sharp contrast to Lena 's soft drawl.

Lena sat opposite Sara and Dottie at the table. She clasped her hands in front of her, drawing attention to her scars again. Jeffrey half expected her to take off her shoes and put her feet on the table.

"I'm sorry…" Dottie began, then stopped. "I mean, for what happened with you."

Lena nodded her head once, staring down as if she needed to collect herself. One of the first interrogation tricks Jeffrey had taught the young detective was that silence is a cop's best friend. Normal people do not like si-lence, and invariably they try to fill it. Most of the time, they do this without letting their brain enter the equation.

"And your sister," Dottie continued. "She was a lovely person. I knew her from the science fair. Jenny loved science. She was…"

Lena 's chest rose and fell as she took a deep breath, but that was all the reaction she gave. "Sibyl was a teacher," Lena supplied. "She loved teaching kids."

The room was silent again, and Jeffrey found himself staring at Sara. Strands of her dark red hair had fallen loose from her ponytail and were sticking to her neck. Her glasses were no longer crooked on her nose, they were crooked on the top of her head. She was staring at Lena the way she might stare at a snake, trying to decide whether or not it was poisonous.

Lena asked, "Do we need to contact your husband, Mrs. Weaver?"

"Dottie," the mother answered. "I've already told him."

"Will he be coming down for the funeral?"

Dottie was quiet, and she fidgeted with a thin silver bracelet on her wrist. When she spoke, she directed her words to Sara. "You cut her open, didn't you?"

Sara opened her mouth as if to respond, but Lena answered the question.

"Yes, ma'am," Lena said. "Dr. Linton performed the autopsy. I attended the procedure. We wanted to do everything we could to make sure Jenny was taken care of."

Dottie stared from Lena to Sara, then back again. Suddenly, she leaned over the table, her shoulders stooped as if she had been punched in the gut. "She was my only child," she sobbed. "She was my baby."

Sara reached out to touch the grieving woman on the back, but Lena stopped her with a look. She leaned forward herself and took Dottie's hand in her own. Lena told the woman, "I know what it's like to lose someone. I really do."

Dottie squeezed Lena 's hands. "I know you do. I know."

Jeffrey realized he had been holding his breath, waiting for this moment. Lena had broken through.

Lena asked, "What happened with her father?"

"Oh." Dottie took a tissue out of her purse. "You know. We weren't getting along. He wanted to do more with his life. He ended up running away with his secretary." She turned to Sara. "You know how men are."

Jeffrey felt mildly irritated, because she was obviously referring to Jeffrey's infidelities. Such was the nature of a small town.

"He never married her, though," Dottie finished. "The secretary." Her lips curved in a slight, triumphant smile.

"My best friend in high school went through this," Lena began, making the bridge between her and Dottie Weaver more solid. "Her father did the same thing to them. He just picked up one day and never looked back. They never saw him again."

"Oh, no. Samuel wasn't like that," Dottie provided. "Not in the beginning, anyway. He saw Jenny once a month until he got transferred to Spokane. That's in Washington." Lena nodded and Dottie continued, "I think the last time he saw her was over a year ago."

"What was his response when you told him last night?"

"He cried," she said, and tears rolled down her own cheeks. She turned to Sara, perhaps because Sara had known Jenny. "She was so sweet. She had such a gentle heart."

Sara nodded, but Jeffrey could tell she was uncomfortable with the way Lena was handling the interview. He wondered what Sara had expected after her physical findings last night.

Dottie blew her nose, and when she spoke her words were more punctuated. "She just got mixed up in this crowd. And that Patterson boy."

"Mark Patterson?" Lena asked, referring to the boy Jenny had threatened to kill.

"Yes, Mark."

"Was she seeing him? Dating him?"

Dottie shrugged. "I can't tell you. They did things in groups, and Jenny was friends with his sister, Lacey."

"Lacey?" Sara asked. She seemed to realize she'd interrupted the flow, and nodded for Dottie to continue.

"Jenny and I were so close after her father left, more like friends than mother and daughter. She was my anchor through everything that happened. Maybe I was too close to her. Maybe I should have given her more independence." Dottie paused again. "It's just that Mark seemed so harmless. He used to cut our grass in the summer. He did odd jobs around the house to earn extra money." She laughed without a trace of humor. "I thought he was a good kid. I thought I could trust him."

Lena did not let her go on this tangent for long. "When did Jenny start hanging around with Lacey?"

"About a year ago, I guess. They were all in the church together. I thought it was good, but these kids… I don't know. You would think that a church would be a safe place for your child, but…" She shook her head. "I didn't know," she said. "I didn't even know she had ever been with a boy, let alone…"

Lena gave Sara an almost imperceptible nod. Jeffrey saw Sara brace herself as she prepared to deliver the news. "Dottie, I did examine Jenny last night."

Dottie pressed her lips tightly together as she waited.

Lena said, "Jenny wasn't pregnant. That wasn't her baby in the skating rink."

The mother stared openly from Sara to Lena, then back again. She seemed too shocked to show anything but disbelief.

Sara clarified. " Lena 's right. She wasn't pregnant, though I can tell you that she was sexually active prior to six months ago."

Dottie's mouth worked, but no words came. She smiled, finally, interpreting this as good news. "So, she didn't do it? She didn't hurt the baby?"

Lena answered, "We don't really know what happened with that yet." She paused, looking at her hands, this time not for effect. After a few beats, she looked back up at Dottie. When she spoke, her voice was low, her eyes locked on the mother as if Sara were no longer in the room. "This is just my opinion, ma'am, but from everything I've learned about your daughter, I can't see her doing what she's been accused of."

The mother's shoulders dropped in obvious relief. She began to cry again, putting a tissue to her nose. "She was so gentle," she said. "There's no way she would ever do this kind of thing." She turned to Sara for confirmation. "She was such a good girl."

Sara nodded again, her smile weak.

"She talked about being a doctor one day," Dottie told Sara. "She said she wanted to help kids just like you do."

Sara's smile wavered, and Jeffrey could see the guilt flash in her eyes.

Lena cut through the moment, asking, "Jenny and this group she was with, the Patterson children?"

"Yes, Mark and Lacey."

"She was still going to church with them? Still active?"

"Until about eight months ago," Dottie answered. "She stopped going. I can't tell you why. She just said she didn't want to go anymore."

"This would have been in January?"

"I suppose."

"Right after Christmas?"

Dottie nodded. "Thereabouts."

"Did anything happen during that time? Maybe a falling out? Did she get angry at anyone? Maybe have a fight with Mark Patterson?"

"No," Dottie answered firmly. "As a matter of fact, she went on a youth retreat with the church the week after Christmas. They all went to Gatlinburg to go skiing. I didn't want her out of the house around the holidays, but she had her heart set on it, and she had brought her grades up in school, so…" She let her voice trail off.

"So, she was gone a week?"

"Yes, a week, but then I had to go to my sister's in Ohio because she wasn't feeling well." Dottie pressed her lips together. "Eunice, my sister, was diagnosed with emphysema a couple of months prior to that. She's doing better now, but it was a really difficult time."

"Jenny was alone in the house then?"

"Oh, no," Dottie shook her head. "Of course not. She stayed with the Pattersons for three or four days, then I came back."

"That was normal, for her to stay with the Pattersons?"

"Yes, then it was," Dottie provided. "Every weekend Lacey would stay over or Jenny would go to the Pattersons'."

"You know the Pattersons well?"

"Teddy and Grace?" She nodded. "Oh, yes, they both go to the church. I'm not too crazy about Teddy," she said, lowering her voice a little. "You can see where Mark gets it, I'll tell you that."

"How's that?"

"He's just kind of…" Dottie began, then shrugged. "I don't know. If you ever meet him, you'll see what I mean."

"So," Lena summed it up. "At Christmas, Jenny was on the church retreat, then she stayed with the Pattersons, then she stopped going to church and stopped talking to the Pattersons?"

"Well," Dottie seemed to go over this in her mind. "Yes, I guess so. I mean, it seems that way now. Before, when it was happening, I didn't make a connection."

"Did you ever suspect your daughter of using drugs?"

"Oh, no, she was adamantly against them," Dottie answered. "She didn't even drink caffeine, and just recently she cut out all sugar."

"For her weight?"

"For her health, she said. She wanted to make her body pure."

" 'Pure,'" Lena repeated. "Did that have something to do with the church, do you think?"

"She had stopped going by then," Dottie reminded her. "I don't know why she did it. We were driving home from school one day, and she just said it: 'I don't want to eat anything with sugar in it anymore. I want my body to be pure.'"

"This didn't strike you as odd?"

"At the time, no," Dottie said. "I mean, maybe it did, but she had been acting so strange lately. Not strange like you would notice, but strange like she stopped drinking Co-Colas when she got home from school, and she started concentrating more on her homework. It was like she was trying to do better. She was more like her old self."

"Her old self before she started hanging out with the Patterson children?"

"Yes, I guess you could say that." Dottie pursed her lips. "It was very strange, because Lacey was a cheerleader, and very popular, and from the day Jenny walked through the school doors Lacey tortured her."

Sara asked, "Tortured her how?"

"Just mean," Dottie answered. "Teasing her about her weight. And this was back when she was just a little chubby. Not like she's been lately."

"You don't think Lacey or Mark ever hit her?"

Dottie seemed surprised. "Heavens no. I would have called the police." She patted her eyes with the tissue. "They just teased her is all. Nothing physical. Like I said, they became friends."

Lena said, "Why did that change?"

"I don't really know. Maybe when they all went from the middle school to the senior high. It's a big adjustment. I think Lacey didn't make the cheerleading team, and she kind of dropped in the pecking order. You know how kids are. They want to belong. Now that I think about it, the sugar thing was probably Lacey's idea."

"Lacey's?" Lena asked.

"Oh, yes. She was always coming up with things for them to do. What kind of clothes they would wear to school, where they would go for the weekend. They spent hours on the telephone talking about it."

Lena smiled. "My sister and I used to do the same thing," she said. Then, "Was it some kind of religious thing, you think?"

"What's that?" Dottie asked, caught off guard.

"The sugar. The caffeine. It sounds kind of religious."

"You don't think…?" Dottie stopped herself. "No, I don't think it's religious. She was very happy with the church. I think it must have been those Patterson children. Mark has some kind of criminal record for stealing things." She shook her head in a slow arc. "I didn't know what to do. Should I have told her she couldn't see him? That would have made her want to spend even more time with him."

"That's generally the case with young girls," Lena agreed. "You still go to church, right?"

"Oh, of course," Dottie answered, nodding her head. "It's a great consolation to me."

"Have you made arrangements yet? I guess they'll do the service?"

Dottie sighed. "I don't know. I just…" She stopped, blowing her nose on a tissue. "I think she liked Preacher Fine. He came by the house to talk to her. So did Brad Stephens. He's the youth minister at the church."

"That so?" Lena asked.

"Oh, yes, Brad is very active in the community."

"Did Pastor Fine come by after Jenny stopped going to church?"

"Yes," she nodded, and she seemed glad to be able to remember something that might be important. "He came by after she had missed a couple of Sundays."

"Did you hear what she said to him?"

"No," Dottie answered. "They were in the den, and I wanted to give them some privacy." She seemed to remember something. "He did call back a week later on the telephone, but she told me to say she wasn't in. That must have been a Saturday, because I was home during the daytime. And I remember that she got a couple more calls that day, and didn't take those, either."

"Was this odd?"

"Not by then," she said. "This must have been around February. I remember I was kind of relieved that she didn't want to talk to Mark anymore."

"Did she have some kind of argument with him?"

Dottie shrugged. "All I know is that she hated him. She went from spending most of her time with him to absolutely hating him."

"Hating him the way a girl hates a guy who won't ask her out?"

Dottie sat back, giving Lena a hard look of appraisal. She finally seemed to realize that this interview was being conducted to establish Jenny's guilt, not clear her name.

Lena repeated her question. "She hated Mark because he didn't want to go out with her anymore?"

"No," Dottie snapped, her nasally twang back. "Of course not."

"You're certain?"

"He was arrested around that time," Dottie told her, obviously more comfortable putting Mark in the criminal role. "For assault. He attacked his sister."

Jeffrey cursed himself for not having checked this before. He picked up the phone in the interview room and punched Maria's extension.

"Yep?" Maria asked.

"Pull a file for me," he said, keeping his voice low. "Mark Patterson."

"Kid from last night?"

"Yes."

"Sure thing," she answered, ringing off.

When Jeffrey turned his attention back to the room, the climate had changed drastically. Dottie Weaver sat in her chair, her jaw set in an angry line.

Lena asked, "Would you like something to drink?"

"No, thank you."

"Did you know your daughter's arm was fractured last year?"

Dottie seemed surprised. She asked Sara, "Did she come see you without me?"

"No," Sara answered, not elaborating. She seemed angry, but not at Dottie Weaver.

Lena pressed on. "Was your daughter interested in African or Middle Eastern culture?"

Dottie shook her head, not understanding. "Of course not. Why? What does that have to do with anything?"

Sara asked, "Dottie, do you want to take a break?"

Lena shifted in her seat, keeping the questioning up. "Your daughter also had a stress fracture in her pelvis, Mrs. Weaver. Did you know this?"

Dottie's mouth worked, but she did not answer.

Lena said, "She was probably raped." She paused, then without emotion added the word, "Brutally."

"I don't…" Dottie turned to Sara, then back to Lena. "I don't understand."

"What about the scarring on her arms and legs?" Lena demanded. "What happened there? Why was your daughter cutting herself?"

"Cutting herself?" Dottie demanded. "What are you talking about?"

"There were cuts all over her body Self-inflicted, from the looks of them. You want to tell me how she could do this without you knowing?"

"She was secretive," Dottie countered. "She covered herself up with her clothes. I never-"

Lena interrupted, "Did you know that she'd had surgery in the last six months?"

"Surgery?" Dottie repeated. "What are you talking about?"

"Not surgery," Sara interrupted, putting her hand on Dottie's arm. She said, "Dottie, when I examined Jenny-"

Lena opened the case file. She tossed a picture across the table, then another. From his position, Jeffrey could not make out which ones, but he knew by the expression on Dottie's face exactly what the mother was looking at.

"Oh, my God, my baby." She put her hand to her mouth.

" Lena," Sara warned, putting her hand over the pictures. She tried to move them away, but Dottie stopped her. They struggled for a few seconds with one of the photos before Sara reluctantly let go.

"W-what?" Dottie stuttered. Her hand shook as she held the photo close to her face.

Lena looked smug as she sat back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. She actually turned to the mirror, to Jeffrey, and raised her eyebrows in a sort of triumph.

Sara put her hand to Dottie's back. "Let me have this," she said, trying to take away the photo.

"My God, my God," the woman muttered, sobbing openly. "My baby. Who did this to my baby?"

Sara shot a look at Lena, and Jeffrey could feel the heat from her stare. Lena shrugged, as if to say, "What did you expect?"

"Oh, God, oh, God," Dottie whispered, then stopped abruptly. Her body went limp, and Sara softened the woman's fall as she fainted to the floor.

Jeffrey stood in the hallway outside the briefing room, talking to Lena.

"We'll need to get to the Patterson boy right away," Jeffrey told her. "Sara can do the autopsy briefing by herself."

Lena looked over his shoulder toward the back door. Sara had walked Dottie to her car to make sure the woman was okay, but not before giving a taut warning to Lena that she would be back.

Jeffrey said, "Maria is pulling his address right now. There may be something more to his involvement in this. Hopefully, we'll catch his sister at home, too."

Lena nodded, crossing her arms. "You want me to take the sister and you can do Mark?"

"Let's see how it goes," Jeffrey answered. "I also want to get a look at this preacher."

Something flickered in Lena 's eyes. She said, "He's at my church. Well, not my church, but it's where Hank goes, and I go along with him sometimes." She shrugged. "You know, for something to do. I'm not religious like that or anything."

"Yeah," Jeffrey answered, a little startled that she had offered this information. It was as close to chatty as Lena had gotten since her attack. He thought maybe it was doing her some good to be involved in the case, and Jeffrey was pleased with that.

"I'm gonna call Brad in off patrol," Jeffrey said. "I want to talk to him as soon as I can and see what he says about Fine."

"You think Fine's the one who did this to Jenny?"

Jeffrey tucked his hands into his pockets. He could not imagine anyone harming a child, but the fact remained that someone had. "We need to find out if Fine was on that retreat during Christmas."

"Maybe I could-" Lena stopped as the back door was thrown open with a loud bang.

Jeffrey turned just as Sara closed the door. He could tell from the way she walked up the hall that she was angry as hell.

About ten feet away from them, Sara demanded, "What were you doing in there? How could you do that to her?"

Lena dropped her hands to her side. Jeffrey saw her fists clench as Sara shortened the distance between them.

Lena moved away, so that her back was against the wall. She kept her hands clenched and her voice was strong when she said, "I was doing my job."

"Your job?" Sara shot back, getting in Lena 's face. Sara had a good six inches on Lena, and she was using them to her advantage. "Is it your job to torture a woman who's just lost her kid? Is it your job to show her those pictures?"

Sara's voice cracked on this last word. "How could you do that to her, Lena? How could you make those pictures the last memory she'll ever have of her daughter?"

Jeffrey said, "Sara-" just as Sara leaned in and whispered something in Lena 's ear. He could not hear what she had said, but Lena 's reaction was immediate. Her shoulders dropped, and she reminded Jeffrey of a kitten that had been picked up by the scruff of its neck.

Sara saw this, and he could see the immediate guilt on her face. She put her hand over her mouth, as if she could keep the words in. "I'm sorry," she said to Lena. "I am so sorry."

Lena cleared her throat, looking down at the floor. "It's okay," she said, though clearly it was not.

Sara must have realized that she was still crowding Lena, because she stepped back. " Lena, I'm sorry," she repeated. "I had no right to say that."

Lena held up her hand to stop Sara. She took a breath, but did not let it go. Instead, she said, "I'll be in the car when you want to go."

The comment was meant for Jeffrey, he realized, and he told Lena, "Okay. Good." He fumbled for his keys and held them out to her, but she did not take them. Instead, she extended her hand, palm up, waiting for him to drop them.

"Okay," Lena said, holding the keys in her fist. She did not look at Jeffrey or Sara again. She stared at the floor, even as she walked down the hallway. Her posture was still slack, and she had an air of being completely defeated about her. Whatever Sara had said to the woman had cut to the bone.

Jeffrey turned to Sara, not understanding what had just happened, or why. He asked, "What the hell did you just say to her?"

Sara shook her head, putting her hand over her eyes. "Oh, Jeff," she said, still shaking her head. "The wrong thing. The completely wrong thing."

Chapter Seven

Lena sat in Jeffrey's Lincoln town car, her body tight as a drum. Her breathing came in pants, and she felt slightly light-headed, as if she might pass out. She was sweating, and not just from being trapped in the hot car. Her whole body felt lit up, as if she had touched a live electrical wire.

"Bitch," she breathed, thinking of Sara Linton. "Stupid bitch," she repeated, as if calling her this would take away what had been said.

Sara's words still echoed in Lena 's head: Now you know what it's like to hurt somebody.

Hurt, Sara had said, but Lena knew what she had meant. Now you know what it's like to rape somebody.

"Goddamn it!" Lena screamed as loud as she could, trying to replace the sound. She slammed her hand against the dashboard, cursing Sara Linton, cursing this stupid job.

Back in the interrogation room, drilling Dottie Weaver like that, for the first time in forever, Lena had started to feel human again, and Sara had taken that away with one simple sentence.

"Dammit!" Lena screamed again, her voice hoarse from the effort. She wanted to cry, but there were no tears left, just a seething anger. Every muscle in her body was tense, and she felt like she could lift the car up and flip it over if she wanted to.

"Stop it, stop it, stop it," Lena told herself, trying to calm down. She had to be okay with this when Jeffrey got to the car, because he would tell Sara-he was fucking her, for God's sake-and Lena did not want Sara Linton to know her words had struck so deep.

Lena snorted a laugh at the thought of Sara's lame apology. As if that made a difference. Sara had said exactly what she meant. The only reason she apologized was she felt bad for saying it out loud. On top of being a bitch, she was a coward.

She took another deep breath, trying to get herself together. "It's okay," Lena whispered to herself. "It doesn't matter. Nothing matters."

After a couple of minutes, Lena felt better. Her heart was not beating so hard, and her stomach seemed to unclench. She kept reminding herself that she was strong, that she had been through worse than this and survived. What Sara Linton thought did not matter in the big scheme of things. What mattered was that Lena could do her job. She had done her job. They had gotten some solid leads to follow in that interview, something that would not have happened if Sara Linton had been in charge.

Lena looked at her watch, then did a double take. She had not realized what time it was. Hank would be wondering what was taking her so long. There was no way she could go to church with him now.

Jeffrey's car had a cell phone mounted into the console, and Lena leaned over, cranking the engine so she could use the phone. She turned on the air conditioner and cracked the window to let some of the heat out of the car. The phone took its time powering up, and she glanced at the station, this time to make sure Jeffrey was not coming out.

Hank picked up on the first ring. "Hello?"

"It's me," she said. There was a pause from his end, and she realized what her voice must sound like. There was a rawness to it, and the edge from her confrontation with Sara was still there. Thankfully, Hank did not ask her what was wrong.

She said, "I'm not going to be able to make it to church."

"Oh?" he said, but did not go further.

"I've got to do an interview with Jeffrey," she told him, even though she did not owe Hank Norton an explanation. "We're going to be a while, probably. You should go without me." Lena 's voice went down on the last part of her sentence as she thought about going home and being by herself.

"Lee?" Hank asked, obviously sensing her fear. "I can stay here for you if you want. You know, just until you get home."

"Don't be stupid," she said, aware that her tone wasn't very convincing. "I'm not a three year old."

"You could come after, you know," Hank said, hesitancy in his voice. "I mean, to hear the choir sing."

Lena experienced a sinking feeling as she remembered the concert. It would be dark outside by the time Hank got home. Inside the house would be darker, no matter how many lights Lena turned on.

"I gotta get up early to go check on the bar, anyway," Hank offered. "I could come home after the service."

"Hank," Lena said, trying not to let on that her heart was about to explode in her chest. "Listen, go to the fucking concert, okay? I don't need you baby-sitting me all the time. I mean, for fuck's sake."

Sunlight flashed off the back door as Jeffrey came out of the building. Maria Simms was right behind him, holding a file folder out to the chief.

Hank asked, "You're sure?"

"Yeah," she answered before she could think about it. "Listen, I've gotta go. I'll see you when you get home."

She hung up the phone before Hank could respond.

"Jesus," Jeffrey said as soon as he opened the car door. "Is the air on?" he asked, throwing her the file Maria had handed him.

"Yeah," Lena mumbled, shifting in her seat as he got in. Without thinking about it, she had moved away from him, as close to the door as she could get. If he noticed this, Jeffrey did not comment.

Jeffrey threw his suit jacket into the back seat. "I got a call," he said, obviously preoccupied. "My mother's had an accident. I've got to go to Alabama tonight."

"Now?" Lena asked, putting her hand on the door handle, thinking she could call Hank from her car and tell him to wait for her.

"No," Jeffrey told her, making a point of looking at her hand. "Tonight."

"Okay," she said, keeping her fingers on the handle, as if she was resting them there.

"It's gonna be a pain in the ass to leave in the middle of this. Maybe Mark Patterson can straighten things out."

"What do you mean, like it was a lover's tiff or something?" Lena asked.

"Maybe he can tell us who the other girls were, who the mother is."

She nodded, but did not think it was likely.

"I talked to Brad. Fine wasn't on the Ski Retreat." Jef-frey frowned. "I'll call Brad again after we talk to Mark and see if I can push him to remember anything else." He paused. "I'm sure he would have said if something bad happened."

"Yeah," Lena agreed. Brad was the kind of cop who would turn in his own mother for jaywalking.

"First thing tomorrow, I want you and Brad to talk to Jenny Weaver's teachers and see what kind of kid she was, maybe find out if there was somebody she was hanging around with. Also, talk to the girls who went on the retreat with Jenny and Lacey. They probably all go to the same school."

"Okay."

"I can't get out of going to Alabama or I'd do this myself."

"Sure," she said, wondering why he kept making excuses. Technically, he was in charge. Besides, it wasn't like there was much Jeffrey could do on the case right now. Unless Mark pointed the finger at someone, they didn't have very much to go on.

He said, "I also want you to interview Fine as soon as possible." He looked at his watch. "Tomorrow morning. Take Frank with you for that one, not Brad."

She repeated, "Okay."

"You said you know him, the preacher," Jeffrey began, putting the car into reverse. "You think he's got this in him?"

"This?" Lena said, then remembered why they were here. "No," she answered. "He's not a bad guy. I just don't get along with him is all."

Jeffrey gave her a look that said she didn't seem to get along with anybody.

Lena offered, "Actually, I've kind of got an appointment with him tomorrow evening."

"An appointment?"

Lena looked at the dashboard. "Like you said before. What you wanted me to do," she prompted, but he did not pick up on it. 'Talk to somebody," she supplied.

"Well, maybe you shouldn't be the one to-"

"No," she insisted. "I want to do it." She tried to smile, but it felt fake, even to her. "It'll surprise him, right? Thinking that I'm there for a session or whatever, but turning it around and asking him about Jenny and the Pattersons."

Jeffrey frowned as he turned the car out of the parking lot. "I'm not sure I like that."

"You always said that the best time to interview somebody is when you catch him off guard," she reminded him, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice. "Besides, Hank set it up. It's not like I would talk to him about…" Lena looked for a word, but could not find one. "I wouldn't talk to him, okay? He's a freak. I don't trust him."

"Why?"

"I just don't," she said. "I just have a feeling about him."

"But you don't think he did this?"

She shrugged, trying to find a way to backpedal. How could she explain to Jeffrey that the main reason she did not like Dave Fine, did not trust him, was that he was a pastor? Jeffrey was being just as stupid about it as Hank. How anyone could not make the connection between Lena 's being assaulted by a religious fanatic and her not wanting to talk to a preacher about it was beyond her.

She said, "I dunno, maybe he's got it in him."

The lie seemed to swing Jeffrey. "Okay. But, take Frank with you."

"Sure."

"This isn't an interrogation. We're just trying to find out if he knows anything. Don't go in there and piss him off for no good reason."

"I know."

"And set something else up," he said. "Something with somebody else." He paused. "That was a condition, Lena. The only reason I let you come back so early was because you promised you would talk to somebody about what happened."

"Yeah," she nodded. "I'll set something up with somebody else, first thing."

He stared at her, as if he could figure her out just from looking.

She tried to sound casual as she changed the subject, asking, "She okay? Your mom, I mean."

"Yeah," he answered. "Are you all right?"

She tried not to sound glib. "I'm fine."

"That thing with Sara-"

"I'm fine," she reassured him, using a tone that would have shut up Hank in two seconds fiat.

Jeffrey, of course, was not Hank Norton. He persisted, "You're sure?"

"Yeah." Then, to prove it, she asked, "What was that thing in the interview? Dr. Linton sounded surprised when the mother mentioned Lacey Patterson."

"She was a patient of Sara's at the clinic," Jeffrey told her. Then, almost to himself, he said, "You know how Sara feels about her kids."

Lena didn't, and she looked down at the file, not answering him. Mark Patterson's name was on the tab, and she flipped it open to see what he had been up to. The top sheet had his vitals on it, including his address. "They live in Morningside?" she asked, referring to a shady part of Madison.

"I'm thinking it's that trailer park. The one with the green awning over the sign?"

"The Kudzu Arms," Lena supplied. She and Brad had been called out to the Kudzu on several occasions over the course of the last few months. The hotter the weather, the hotter the tempers.

"Anyway," Jeffrey said, moving things along. "What's he got on his sheet?"

Lena thumbed through the pages. "Two B and Es when he was ten, both of them at the Kudzu Arms. Most recently, he beat up his sister pretty bad. His father called us out, we got there, they wouldn't press charges." She stopped reading, providing, " 'We' means Deacon and Percy," she supplied, referring to two beat cops. "They pulled this one, not me and Brad."

Jeffrey scratched his chin, seeming to think this through. "I don't even remember when it happened."

"Just after Thanksgiving," Lena told him. "Then, around Christmas time, Deacon and Percy were called back. It was the father again, and he asked for them specifically." She skimmed the report Deacon had written. "This time, charges were filed. They took him down to the pokey for a couple of days, Mark was supposed to take some anger management classes in exchange for time served." She snorted a laugh. "Buddy Conford was his lawyer."

"Buddy's not that bad," Jeffrey said.

Lena closed the file, giving him an incredulous look. "He's a whore. He puts addicts and murderers back on the streets."

"He's doing his job, just like we are."

"His job screws our job," Lena insisted.

Jeffrey shook his head. "He's gunna be talking to you about the Weaver situation," he told her. "The shooting."

Lena snorted a laugh. "He's working for Dottie Weaver?"

"The city," he told her. "I guess he's doing it as a favor to the mayor." Jeffrey shrugged. "Anyway, work it out with him. Tell him what happened."

"It was a clean shot," Lena told him, because if there was one truth in her life right now, it was that Jeffrey had taken the only option given to him. She said, "Brad will say the same thing."

Jeffrey was quiet, and he seemed to drop the subject, but after a few minutes he pulled the car over to the side of the road. Lena felt a sense of déjà vu, and her stomach lurched as she thought about being in the car with Hank that morning, and how she had embarrassed herself. There was no question in her mind now that Lena would not have the same problem with Jeffrey. She could be stronger around Jeffrey because he did not see her the way that Hank did. Hank still thought of Lena as a teenage girl because that was the only way he had ever really known her.

Lena waited as Jeffrey put the car in park and turned toward her. She felt the hair on the back of her neck rise, and thought she might be in trouble or something.

"Between you and me…" Jeffrey said, then stopped. He waited until she looked him in the eye and repeated himself. "Between you and me," he said.

"Yeah," Lena nodded, not liking the serious tone in his voice. Her stomach sank in her gut as she realized he was going to say something about Sara.

He surprised her, saying instead, "The shot."

She nodded for him to continue.

"With Weaver," he said, as if he needed to narrow it down. She could see how upset he was. For the first time, she understood what it meant to read someone like a book. She saw the kind of pain in his eyes that she would never expect to see in Jeffrey Tolliver.

"Tell me the truth," he said, a begging quality to his voice. "You were there. You saw what happened."

"I did," she agreed, feeling a startling need coming off of him.

"Tell me," he said, begging more openly this time. Lena felt a kind of rush from his desperation. Jeffrey needed something from her. Jeffrey Tolliver, who had seen her naked, nailed down to the floor, bruised and bleeding, needed something from Lena.

She let the moment linger, savoring the power more than anything else. "Yeah," she finally said, though with little conviction.

He continued to stare, and she could see the doubt in his eyes. For a moment, she thought he might even tear up.

"It was a clean shot," she told him. He kept staring straight at her, as if he could see into her. Lena knew that her tone wasn't confident, and that he had picked up on this. She knew, also, that she had not made it clear that she trusted his judgment. Her response had been purposefully ambiguous. Lena had no idea why she had done this, but she felt the thrill of it for a long while, even as Jeffrey put the car back into gear and drove down the road.

Grant County was made up of three cities: Heartsdale, Madison, and Avondale. Like Avondale, Madison was poorer than Heartsdale, and there were plenty of trailer parks around because it was cheap housing. This did not necessarily mean that the people occupying the trailers were cheap. There were some better parks with community centers and swimming pools and neighborhood watches, just as there were some that festered with domestic violence and drunken brawls. The Kudzu Arms fell into this second category. It was about as far from a neighborhood as a place could get without falling off the map. Trailers in various states of dilapidation fanned out from a single dirt road. Some of the residents had tried to plant gardens to no avail. Even without the drought, which had put all of Georgia on water restrictions, the heat would have killed the flowers. The heat was enough to kill people. The plants did not have a chance.

"Depressing," Jeffrey noted, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. It was a nervous habit she had never seen in him, and Lena felt the guilt come back like a strong undertow, pulling her the wrong way. She should have been more adamant about the shooting. She should have looked him right in the eye and told him the truth, that killing the teenager was the only thing he could have done. Lena could not think how to make it better. A thousand adamant yeses would never erase her initial reticence and the impact it had made. What had she been thinking?

Jeffrey asked, "What's the address?"

Lena flipped the file open, tracing her finger to the address. "Three-ten," she said, looking up at the trailers. "These are all twos."

"Yeah," Jeffrey agreed. He looked over his shoulder across the road from the park. "There it is."

Lena turned as he backed out of the park. A large mobile home, she guessed a doublewide, was on the other side of the road. Unlike the ones in the park across from it, this trailer looked more like a house. There was something like landscaping in the front yard, and a cinder block foundation covered the bottom portion. Someone had painted the concrete blocks black to offset the white trailer, and a large covered deck served as a front porch. To the side was a carport, and beside this was a large diesel semi.

"He's a truck driver?" Jeffrey asked.

Lena thumbed down to the proper space on the form. "Long hauler," she told him. "Probably owns his own rig."

"Looks like he makes some money from it."

"I think you can if you own your own truck," Lena told him, still skimming Mark Patterson's file. "Oh, wait," she said. "Patterson owns the Kudzu, too. He put it up as collateral when he bailed out Mark."

Jeffrey parked in front of the Patterson trailer. "Sure doesn't take good care of it. The park, I mean."

"No," Lena answered, looking back across the road. The Patterson house was a stark contrast to the desolate-looking Kudzu Arms across the street. She wondered what this said about the father, that he would take such pride in his own home, yet let the people living less than thirty yards away live in such squalor. Not that it was Patterson's responsibility to help people out, but Lena would have thought the man would try to pick himself some nicer neighbors, especially with two kids in the house.

"Teddy," Lena told Jeffrey. "That's the father's name."

"Maria pulled his sheet back at the station," Jeffrey told her. "He's got a couple of assaults on him, but they go back about ten years. He did some time on one of them."

"Apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

A large man stepped from the trailer as Jeffrey and Lena got out of the car. Lena guessed this was Teddy Patterson, and she felt a momentary flash of panic because he was such a physically large man. Taller than Jeffrey by a couple of inches and at least thirty pounds heavier, Patterson looked as if he could pick up both of them in one hand and toss them across the road.

Lena felt angry that she even took note of his size. Before, Lena had felt like she could take on anybody. She was a strong woman, muscular from working out in the gym, and she had always been able to push herself to do whatever she wanted to do. Now, she had lost that feeling, and the sight of Patterson gave her a slight chill, even though he wasn't doing anything more threatening than wiping his hands on a dirty dish towel.

"You lost?" Patterson asked. He had that look about him that all cops learned to recognize: Teddy Patterson was a con, right down to the jailhouse tattoos clawing up his arms like chicken scratches. Lena and Jeffrey exchanged glances, which did not seem to be lost on Patterson.

"Mr. Patterson?" Jeffrey asked, taking out his badge. "Jeffrey Tolliver, Grant Police."

"I know who you are," Patterson shot back, tucking the dish towel into his pocket. Lena could see it was soiled with what looked like grease. She also took note of the fact that Patterson had not bothered to acknowledge her.

Lena opened her mouth to speak, to let him know that she was there, but nothing came out. The thought of him training his animosity on her brought a cold sweat.

"This is detective Lena Adams," Jeffrey said. If he noticed her fear, he did not seem to register it. "We're here to talk to Mark about what happened last night."

"Alright," Patterson said, running the words together like most people in Madison did, so that it came out more as "Ahte."

Patterson turned his back to them and walked toward the house. He stood in the doorway as Jeffrey passed, crowding him on purpose, and Lena could see that the man was a lot taller than she had thought from the car. Lena was not sure, but Patterson seemed to narrow the space between his stomach and the door jamb as Lena passed through. She turned slightly so that she would not be forced to touch him, but even then Lena could tell from the smile on his face that he knew she was feeling intimidated. She hated that she was so transparent.

"Have a seat," Patterson offered, indicating the couch. Neither Jeffrey nor Lena took him up on this. Patterson's arms were crossed over his barrel chest, and Lena noticed that his head was about three inches from the low ceiling. The room was large, but Patterson filled the space with his presence.

Lena looked around the trailer, trying to behave like a cop instead of a scared little girl. The place was orderly and clean, certainly not what she would have guessed if she had met Teddy Patterson in a bar somewhere. The room they stood in was long, a kitchen at one end, with a hallway to what she assumed was the rest of the trailer, then the room they stood in, which had a medium-sized fireplace and a big-screen television. A floral scent was in the air, probably from one of those plug-in air fresheners. The living room seemed feminine, too, the walls painted a light pink, the couch and two chairs covered in a light blue with a matching pink stripe. A quilt was over the couch, the pattern complementing the decor. On the coffee table, a bowl of fresh cut flowers was surrounded by women's magazines. There were some nice framed prints on the walls, and the furniture looked new. The carpet, too, was freshly vacuumed. Lena could see Patterson's footprints indenting the pile where he had walked.

"We just need to talk to Mark about what happened last night," Jeffrey told Patterson as Lena continued her survey of the room. She stopped midturn, seeing a picture of Jesus hanging over the fireplace. His pierced and bleeding hands were open in the classic "let's be pals" Jesus pose. Jeffrey seemed to notice the painting at the same time, too, because he was staring at Lena when she made herself look away. He raised his eyebrows, as if to ask if she was all right. Lena could feel rather than see Patterson assessing this exchange. Of course he had heard about what happened to Lena. She could only imagine what kind of pleasure Patterson was getting out of reviewing the details of her assault in his mind. The hold this gave Patterson over Lena was suffocating, and she made herself look the other man right in the eye. He held her gaze for just a second, then glanced down at her hands.

She knew exactly what he was looking for, and Lena was fighting the urge to tuck her hands into her pockets when a small woman with a ravaged look about her walked up the hallway, asking, "Teddy? Did you get my pills?"

She stopped when she saw Jeffrey and Lena, putting her hand to her neck. "What's this about?"

"Police," Patterson said, looking away quickly. Something like guilt flashed in his eyes, as if his wife might guess what he had been thinking about Lena a few seconds before.

"Well," she said, a wry look on her face. "Tell me something I don't know."

She was a small woman, probably no taller than Lena 's own five-foot-four. Her dark blonde hair was thin, her scalp showing through in places. She looked almost emaciated, like pictures Lena had seen in history books of Holocaust survivors. There was strength to her, though, and Lena imagined this was the woman who was responsible for keeping the trailer so neat and organized. Underneath her sickly appearance, she had the stance of a person who knew how to take care of things.

"I knew you were coming," the woman said, "so I know I shouldn't feel surprised." Her hand stayed at her neck, nervously playing with a charm on her necklace. Lena guessed from the Jesus on the wall that it was a cross.

"Mrs. Patterson?" Jeffrey asked.

"Grace," she told him, holding out her hand. Jeffrey shook it, and Lena took the opportunity to let herself study Teddy Patterson. He watched his wife and Jeffrey with a slack expression on his face. His shoulders stooped somewhat when his wife was in the room, and he did not seem so threatening in her presence.

"We want to talk to Mark," Jeffrey told the woman. "Is he around?"

Grace Patterson gave her husband a worried look.

Patterson told his wife, "Why don't you sit down, hon?" Then, as if he needed to explain this to Jeffrey, he said, "She's been sick lately."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Jeffrey said. He sat down by Grace on the couch and nodded to Lena, indicating that she should sit as well. Lena hesitated, but did as she was directed, sitting in one of the chairs.

The light coming through the window hit Grace Patterson just right, and Lena could see how pale she was. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her lips were an unnatural shade of pinkish-blue. Lena realized the woman matched the living room perfectly.

Grace spoke. "I appreciate your not interrogating Mark last night, Chief Tolliver. He was very upset."

Jeffrey said, "It's understandable that he would need some time to recover from what happened."

Teddy Patterson snorted at this. Lena was not surprised. Men like Teddy Patterson did not think that people needed to recover from things. He was actually more like Lena in that regard. You dealt with it and you got over it. Or, at least you tried and did not whine about it.

"Is his sister around?" Jeffrey asked. "We'd like to talk to her, too."

"Lacey?" Grace said, putting her hand to her necklace again. "She's at her grandmother's right now. We thought it would be best."

Jeffrey asked, "Where was she last night?"

"Here," Grace answered. "She was taking care of me." She swallowed, looking down at her hands in her lap. "I don't usually ask her to stay with me, but I had a very bad night, and Teddy had to work." She gave him a weak smile. "Sometimes the pain gets to be too much for me. I like having my children around."

"But Mark wasn't here?" Jeffrey said, even though that much was obvious.

Her face clouded. "No, he wasn't. He's been a bit difficult to control lately."

"He smacked up his sister a while back," Patterson told them. "I guess you got that on his sheet. He's a real shit, that boy. Nothing good coming from him."

Grace did not make a sound, but her disapproval traveled through the room.

"Sorry," Patterson apologized. He actually looked contrite. Lena wondered at the hold Grace had over her husband. In the space of a few short minutes, she had subdued the man.

Patterson said, "I'll go fetch Mark," and left the room.

Lena caught herself running her tongue along the back of her teeth again. For some reason, she could not speak. There were questions to ask, and Lena knew that Jeffrey wanted them to come from Lena, but she was too preoccupied to focus. Her goal was to get out of this trailer and away from Teddy Patterson as quickly as possible. The truth was that even with his wife sitting three feet away, and Jeffrey right beside her, Lena felt scared. More than that, she felt threatened.

Lena tried to take her mind off the claustrophobia she was feeling. She stared off into the kitchen, which was roomy but not large. Strawberry wallpaper lined the walls, and there was even a clock with a strawberry on it over the kitchen table.

Grace cleared her throat. "Mark has had a bad time lately," she said, picking up where she had left off. "He's been in and out of trouble at school."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Mrs. Patterson," Jeffrey said. He sat up on the couch, probably to establish a sense of rapport. "How about Lacey?"

"Lacey has never been in trouble a day in her life," Grace told him. "And that's the God's truth. That child is an angel."

Jeffrey smiled, and Lena could guess what he was thinking. Usually the angels were the ones who committed the most heinous crimes. "Is she dating any boys?"

"She's thirteen," Grace told him, as if that answered it. "We don't even let boys call the house."

"She couldn't have been seeing anyone on the side?"

"I don't see how," Grace answered. "She's home from school every day when she's supposed to be. Whenever she goes out, it's always with a group of her girlfriends and she always comes back in time for her curfew."

Lena could sense Jeffrey trying to catch her eye, but she ignored him.

He asked, "What time is her curfew?"

"School nights we don't let her go out, of course. Fridays and Saturdays, nine o'clock."

"Does she ever sleep over with anybody?"

Grace looked as if she had just realized that Jeffrey's interest in Lacey was more calculated than she had originally thought. The look was similar to the one Dottie Weaver had given Lena just hours before, but there was far more menace in Grace Patterson than there had been in Dottie Weaver.

She demanded, "Why are you asking so many questions about my daughter? It was Mark that little girl pointed the gun at."

Jeffrey said, "Dottie told us that Lacey and Jenny were friends."

"Well…" she began, the hesitancy still there as she obviously tried to think a step ahead of Jeffrey's questions. Finally, she said, "Yes, they were friends. Then something happened and they stopped hanging around each other." She shrugged. "I guess it's been a few months since that happened. We haven't seen Jenny around for a while, and I know Lacey hasn't gone over to her house."

"Did she tell you why?"

"I assumed it was some silly little disagreement."

"But you didn't ask her?"

Grace shrugged. "She's my daughter, Chief Tolliver, not my best friend. Little girls have their secrets. You can ask your ex-wife about that."

He nodded at this. "Sara said Lacey's a great kid. Very smart."

"She is," Grace agreed, and she seemed pleased to have her daughter complimented. "But, it's not my place to pry if she's not ready to talk about it."

"Maybe she wouldn't mind talking with someone else about it?"

"Meaning?"

"Do you mind if I talk to her?"

Grace gave him another sharp look. "She's a minor. If you don't have cause, you can't talk to her without my permission. Is that right?"

"We don't want to talk to her as a suspect, Mrs. Patterson. We just want to get some idea of what state of mind Jenny Weaver was in. We don't really need your permission for that."

"But, I've just told you that Lacey hasn't seen Jenny for a while-probably since Christmas. She wouldn't have any idea about this." Grace gave a polite but humorless smile. "I do not want my daughter interrogated, Chief Tolliver." She paused. "By you or by Dr. Linton."

"She's not suspected of any wrongdoing."

"I want to keep it that way," she said. "Do I need to call the school and tell them that she is not to talk to anyone without either her father or me in the room?"

Jeffrey paused, probably thinking that she knew a hell of a lot more about the law than they had initially suspected. Schools were very friendly with law enforcement, and since administrators served as in loco parentis while the kids were on campus, they could allow interviews.

Jeffrey said, "That's not necessary."

"Do I have your word on that?"

Jeffrey gave a quick nod. "All right," he said, and Lena could hear the disappointment in his voice.

"We'd still like to talk to her," Jeffrey said. "You're more than welcome to sit in on an interview."

"I'll have to talk to Teddy about that," she told him. "But we can both imagine what he'll say." She gave a slight almost-smile, ending the hostility. "You know about daddies and their little girls."

Jeffrey sighed, and nodded again. Lena knew that Teddy Patterson was more likely to slip on his wife's Sunday best than to let his daughter talk to a cop. Cons learned to distrust the police early on, and despite the fact that he had been out of prison for a good while, Teddy still seemed to be practicing this.

To his credit, Jeffrey did not completely give up. He asked, "She hasn't been sick lately, has she?"

"Lacey?" Grace asked, obviously surprised. "No, of course not. Ask Dr. Linton if you like." She put her hand to her chest self-consciously. "I'm the only one in the family who's ever been ill."

"She was going to church? Lacey was?"

"Yes," Grace told them. She smiled again, and Lena could see that her teeth were slightly gray. "Mark was, too. For a while, anyway." She paused, looking at the fireplace. Lena thought she was looking at the painting, but then she noticed there were pictures of the family on the mantel. They were the kinds of snapshots every family had, kids and parents at the beach, at an amusement park, out camping in the woods. The Grace Patterson in these photos was a little heavier and not so sunken-looking. The kids looked younger, too. The boy who must have been Mark looked around ten or eleven years old, his sister around eight. They seemed like a happy family. Even Teddy Patterson smiled for the camera in the few shots that showed him.

"So," Jeffrey prompted, "they went to the Baptist?"

"Crescent Baptist," Grace answered, her voice animated for the first time. "Mark seemed very happy there for a while. Like some of his nervous energy was being directed, finally. He even started doing better in school."

"And then?"

"And then…" She shook her head slowly, her shoulders slumped. "I don't know. Around Christmas, he started to get bad again."

"Christmas this past year?" Jeffrey asked.

"Yes," she said. "I really don't know what happened, but the anger was back. He seemed so…" Again, she let her voice trail off. "We tried to get him into counseling, but he wouldn't show up. We couldn't make him go, though"-she looked down the hallway, as if to check to see if they were alone-"his father tried. Teddy thinks that people should be like him. Boys, that is. Or men, I should say. He has strong ideas about what's acceptable."

"There was a church retreat at Christmastime. Did Mark go on that?"

"No," she shook her head. "This was around the time he started to act up. He was grounded, and his father wouldn't let him go."

"Lacey went?"

"Yes," she smiled. "She'd never been skiing before. She had a wonderful time."

They fell silent, and Grace Patterson picked at some nonexistent lint on her dress. Obviously, she had more to say.

"I'm very sick," she said, her voice low. "My doctors don't hold out much hope for me."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Jeffrey said, and he truly seemed to be.

"Breast cancer," Grace said, putting her hand to her chest. Lena noticed for the first time that the woman's chest was almost completely flat under her blouse. "Lacey will be fine. She always lands on her feet. I don't like to think what will happen to Mark when I'm gone. For all his posturing, he's a gentle boy."

"I'm sure he'll be okay," Jeffrey assured her, though even to Lena he did not seem confident. Short of a miracle, boys like Mark did not turn themselves around.

Grace picked up on the deception. She gave a small, knowing chuckle. "Oh, I'm no fool, Chief Tolliver, but I thank you all the same."

Teddy Patterson's footsteps were heavy in the hallway, and the trailer shifted slightly from his weight as he entered the room. His son was behind him, a stark contrast to the father. Patterson grabbed the boy's arm and pulled him into the room.

Lena 's first impression of Mark Patterson was that he was incredibly handsome. Last night, she had not taken much notice of him because so much had been going on. In the trailer, she took her time assessing him. Mark's dark blond hair matched his mother's, but it was more full, and slightly shorter. His eyelashes were longer than any she had ever seen on a man, and his eyes were a piercing blue. Like most sixteen-year-old boys, he had the beginnings of a goatee on his chin and the semblance of a mustache over his full lips.

As Lena watched, he tucked his hair behind his ears with his fingers. She could not help but think there was something erotic in the gesture. There was also something about the way he walked and held his shoulders that gave him a certain sensuality. His faded jeans rested a little below his thin hips, and the tight white T-shirt he wore rode up a little, showing off the definition in his abs.

Despite all of this, there was a sexlessness to him. Mark Patterson was a sixteen-year-old child on the verge of becoming a man. He was boyish in that androgynous way that was now popular with teenagers. When Lena was in high school, boys had done everything possible to make themselves appear more masculine. Today, they were more comfortable with blurring the roles.

"Here he is," Patterson barked, pushing Mark farther into the room. The man seemed angry, even more so than before, and his hands were in tight lists like he wanted nothing more than to pummel his son. For some reason, Teddy Patterson reminded Lena of Hank. The gruff way he had pushed Mark and the nasty tone of his voice could have come from Hank twenty years ago.

"We'll go for a drive," Patterson told his wife. "Get your pills from the pharmacy."

"Teddy," Grace said, the word catching in her throat. Lena wondered, too, why a man with Teddy Patterson's innate distrust of the police would leave his only son alone with them. By law, Teddy could be in on the interview. He was effectively hanging his son out to dry.

Jeffrey obviously wanted to capitalize on this. "Mr. Patterson," he began. "Do you mind if we schedule an appointment with Mark tomorrow to get a blood sample from him?"

Patterson's eyebrow went up, but he nodded. "Just tell him when and he'll be there."

Grace said, "Teddy."

"Let's go," Patterson ordered his wife. "The pharmacy closes soon."

If Grace Patterson had power over her husband, she had learned when not to use it. She stood, offering her hand first to Jeffrey, then to Lena. Grace had not even talked to Lena the entire time, but the woman kept Lena 's hand in hers for longer than just a polite good-bye.

"Take care," she told Lena.

Grace Patterson stopped in front of her son before she followed her husband out the door, giving him a kiss on the cheek. She was a couple of inches shorter than he was, and she had to rise up on her toes to do this.

"Good-bye," Grace told him, patting his shoulder.

Mark watched her leave, touching his fingers to his cheek where his mother had kissed him. He looked at his fingers, as if he might see the kiss on them.

"Mark?" Jeffrey asked, getting the boy's attention.

"Sir?" he said, drawing out the word. His body was too loose to stand still, and he swayed a bit.

Jeffrey asked, "You stoned?"

"Yes, sir," he answered, putting his hand on the back of a chair to steady himself. Lena saw a large gold class ring on his finger. The red stone caught the light, and she guessed there was an initial underneath.

Mark asked, "You wanna take me to jail?"

"No," Jeffrey told him. "I want to talk to you about what happened last night."

"What happened last night," he mimicked, his words slurring together. "I wanna thank you for shooting the right person."

Jeffrey took out his notebook, flipping it open to a blank page. As Lena watched, he took out his pen and wrote Mark's name at the top of the page, asking, "You think I did?"

Mark smiled lazily. He walked around the chair and sat down, blowing air out between his lips as he did. There was something sexual even in this movement, and rather than being repulsed, as Lena thought she would have been, she was intrigued. She had never met a grown man who seemed so comfortable with himself, let alone a teenage boy.

Jeffrey started out with a hard question. "Were you the father of that baby last night?"

Mark raised his eyebrow the same way his father had. "Nope," he said, his lips smacking on the word.

Jeffrey tried a different avenue, asking, "Was your sister with you last night?"

"Naw, man," Mark answered. "My mom, you know. She's not doing too well. Lace stayed home with her." He shrugged. "She don't ask often, you know? My mom likes to leave us out of the fact that she's fucking dying."

He swallowed visibly, turning his head to the side, looking out the window. He seemed to compose himself, because when he looked back at Jeffrey, the smile was there, teasing at his lips. There was something more to this kid than his looks. A shadow seemed to be hanging over him, and not just because of what happened last night. He had about him the air of being damaged, something Lena could relate to. He seemed fragile, but slightly dangerous at the same time. Not that he was threatening like his father. If anything, Mark Patterson seemed to be a danger only to himself.

Lena found her voice for the first time since they had gotten to the trailer. "You like your sister?" she asked.

"She's a saint," Mark said, twisting the ring on his finger. "Daddy's little girl."

"Has she been feeling okay lately?" Lena asked. "She hasn't been sick or anything, right?"

Mark stared openly at Lena. There was nothing hostile about the stare. He seemed curious about her and nothing more. He said, "She seemed fine this morning. You'd have to ask her."

Lena tried, "Why was Jenny Weaver so mad at you?"

He raised his shoulders, held them there for a while, then let them drop. Lena watched as he lifted up his shirt and absently started to stroke his flat stomach. "You know, lots of girls get mad at me."

Jeffrey asked, "Were you involved with her?"

"What, in a relationship?" He shook his head slowly side to side. "Nah. I mean, I did her a couple of times, but it was nothing serious." He held up his hand to stop the next question. "This was when I was fifteen, officer."

Lena told him, "There has to be at least a five-year age difference for statutory rape."

Jeffrey shifted on the couch, obviously not pleased that Lena had given Mark this information. He could have used this threat for leverage. Now he had to find something else.

Jeffrey asked, "When was the last time you had sex with her?"

"I dunno," Mark said, still stroking his belly. There was a small tattoo on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. Lena could make out a black heart with an inverted white heart in the center of it. Mark had obviously done this himself, because the symbol looked as rudimentary as his father's jailhouse ballpoint ink tattoos.

Lena prompted, "You had sex with her a lot?"

Mark shrugged. "Often enough," he said, still stroking his stomach. He started picking at the trail of hair between his navel and his pubis, giving Lena a sly look. She glanced at Jeffrey, wondering what he was making of this. Jeffrey was not looking, though. Instead, he was copying the tattoo into his notebook.

"Well," Jeffrey began, blacking in the heart. "Take a guess."

"Maybe a year or so ago?" Mark offered. "She wanted it, man. She begged me."

Jeffrey finished the drawing, looking up. "This isn't about nailing you for rape, Mark. I don't care if you've been banging goats in the backyard. You know what this is about."

"It's about her wanting to kill me," he said. "And why."

"Right," Lena said. "We just want to get to the bottom of this, Mark. This is about Jenny, and why she would do what she did."

Mark gave Lena a lazy smile. "Gosh, detective, you sure are pretty."

Lena felt embarrassed, and wondered what signals she had given the boy. Certainly, sex was the last thing on her mind, and she wasn't sure that she thought Mark Patterson was so much attractive as perfect. There was a cinema-idol quality to his appearance. He seemed too good-looking to be true. She was showing the same interest in him as she would a beautiful painting or an exquisite sculpture.

"You're pretty handsome yourself, Mark," she countered, making her words sharp. Teddy Patterson might be able to fuck with her, but she would be damned if his precocious boy would. "Which is why I'm puzzled about Jenny. She wasn't exactly homecoming queen material. Couldn't you get any better than that?"

Her words hit him exactly where she had intended them to, in his ego.

"Trust me, detective, I've had a lot better than that."

"Yeah?" she asked. "What, you banged her out of the goodness of your heart?"

"I let her suck me off sometimes," he said, his fingers moving lower down his belly, his eyes on Lena as he obviously tried to gauge her reaction to him touching himself. His interest gave Lena some insight into the boy. She imagined that someone so attractive was used to trading on his looks. No wonder his father, a man who had the physical presence of a freight train, was so disgusted by his son.

Suddenly, she felt sorry for him. Lena shifted on the couch, feeling a bit unsettled. She had spent such a long time feeling sorry for herself that for a moment she did not know what to do with this new emotion.

Mark said, "She had this thing she did with her tongue, like a lollipop. No teeth. It was great."

Lena felt her heart rate accelerate, willing herself not to react to his words. Probably the boy had no idea who she was or what had happened to her.

She could sense Jeffrey about to step in, so she said the first thing that came to her mind to keep him from interfering. "So, you let her give you blow jobs?" she said, trying to be flippant. Still, she kept her tongue firmly against the back of her teeth as she waited for his answer.

A smile broke out on his lips, and he stared at her, his piercing blue eyes sparkling with humor. "Yeah."

"Here? In this house?"

Mark gave a light chuckle. "Right down the hall."

"With your mama in the house?"

He stopped, seeming more afraid than angry. "Don't bring my mama into this."

Lena smiled. "We have to, Mark, because that's where you've tripped yourself up. You wouldn't do that kind of thing in your mother's house."

He twisted his lips to the side, obviously thinking this through. "Maybe we did it in her house. Maybe we did it in the car."

"So, you went out with Jenny? Dated her?"

"Shit no," he countered. "I took her places with my sister." He shrugged, and thankfully his hand stopped. "The mall, the movies. Different places."

"This is when you let her do you? On these trips?"

He shrugged, meaning yes.

"And your sister was where? In the front seat?"

He paled slightly. Mark seemed to transition back and forth from a child to a teenager to a man. If someone had asked her how old Mark Patterson was, she would have guessed anywhere between ten and twenty.

Lena cleared her throat, then asked, "Where was Lacey when you were letting Jenny do you, Mark?"

Mark stared at the flower arrangement on the coffee table. He was very quiet for what seemed like a long time. Finally, he told them, "We met at the church, alright?" He said alright the same way his father did, running the words together.

"You were having sex with her in church," Lena said, not a question.

"The basement," he told them. "They don't check the windows. We sneaked out, okay?"

"That sounds pretty elaborate," Lena said.

"What does that mean?"

Lena thought about how to phrase her answer. "It's not opportune, Mark. You know what that means?"

"I'm not stupid."

"Taking her to the mall, maybe running her and your sister to the store," Lena paused, making sure she had his attention. "Those things sound like opportune times to me. She was there, you were there, it just kind of happened."

"Right," he said. "That's how it was."

"But the church," Lena countered. "The church seems more deliberate. These were not sudden opportunities. These were planned meetings."

Mark nodded, then stopped himself. He said, "So?"

"So," Lena picked up again, "if your relationship was casual, why were you arranging these late night meetings?"

Mark turned his head slightly, looking out the window. He was obviously trying to come up with an answer to the question, but unable to.

Lena said, "She's dead, Mark."

"I know that," he whispered, his eyes flickering toward Jeffrey, then back to the floor. "I saw it happen."

"Is this how you want to talk about her, like she was a whore?" Lena asked him. "Do you really want to tear her down like that?"

Mark's throat bobbed as he swallowed. After a couple of minutes, he mumbled something she could not understand.

"What?" Lena asked.

"She wasn't bad," he said, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. A tear slid down his cheek, and he turned his gaze back toward the window. "Okay?"

Lena nodded. "Okay."

"She listened to me," he began, his voice so low she had to strain to hear him. "She was smart, you know? She read and things, and she helped me with school, some."

Lena sat back on the couch, waiting for him to continue.

"People think things about me," he said, his tone more childish. "They think I'm a certain way, but maybe I'm not. Maybe there's more to me than that. Maybe I'm a human being."

"Of course you are," Lena told him, thinking that she probably understood Mark more than he thought. Every time she walked out in public, Lena felt like the person she really was had been erased. All she was now was the girl who had been raped. Sometimes, Lena wondered if she would not have been better off if she had died. At least then people would see her as tragic rather than as some kind of victim.

Mark rubbed his fingers along his goatee, pulling Lena back into the interview. He said, "There's things I did, okay? That maybe I didn't want to do and maybe she didn't want to do…" He shook his head, his eyes closed tightly. "Things she did…" His voice trailed off. "I know she was fat, okay? But she was more than that."

"What was she, Mark?"

He tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. When he spoke, he seemed more sure of himself, back under control. "She listened to me. You know, about my mom." He gave a humorless laugh. "Like when my mom told us she didn't want fucking chemo this time, that she was just gonna let herself die. Jenny understood that." He found a thread on the arm of the chair and picked at it until it pulled. Mark's concentration was so focused on the string that Lena wondered if he had forgotten she and Jeffrey were there.

Lena let herself look at Jeffrey. He was sitting back on the couch, too. Both of them stared at Mark, waiting for him to finish.

"She tutored me in school, some," he said, twisting his ring. "She was younger than me, but she knew how to do things. She liked to read." He smiled, as if a distant memory had come back. He used the back of his hand to wipe under his nose. "She started hanging out with Lacey. I guess they had a lot in common. She was so nice to me." He shook his head, as if to clear it. "I just liked her because she was nice to me." His lips trembled. "When Mama got sick…" he started. Again he was quiet. "We thought she'd beat it, you know? And then it was back, and she was in and out of the hospital, and sick all the time. So sick she couldn't even walk sometimes. So sick Daddy had to help her stand up to take a shower, even." He paused, then, "And then she said she wasn't gonna do it anymore, couldn't take the chemo, couldn't take the being sick. Said we didn't need to see her like that, but how does she want us to see her, man? Dead?"

Mark put his hands over his eyes. "Jenny was just there, you know? She was there for me, not anybody else…" He paused. "She was so sweet, and she was interested in me, and talking to me, and she understood what I was going through, right? She wasn't about being a cheerleader or wearing my damn class ring. She was all about being there for me." He dropped his hands, staring at Lena. "It wasn't about Lacey, or about Dad. She thought I was good. She thought I was worth something." He dropped his head into his hands, obviously crying.

Lena became conscious of the clock on the wall. Its tick was loud, popping in her ears. Jeffrey was completely still beside her. He had a way of making himself seem part of the scenery, letting her take the lead in things. This was the old Lena and Jeffrey. This was Lena who knew how to do her job, Lena who was in charge of things. She took a deep breath, pulling her shoulders up, letting the air fill her lungs. In this moment, in this room right now, she was herself again. For the first time in months, she was Lena again.

She let a full minute pass before asking Mark, "Tell me what happened."

He shook his head. "It's so wrong," he said. "It all just went so wrong." He leaned forward, his chest almost to his knees, his face contorted in pain as if someone had kicked him. He covered his face with his hands and started to sob again.

Before she knew what she was doing, Lena was down on her knees beside the boy, holding one of his hands. She put her hand on his back, trying to comfort him. "It's okay," she told him, hushing him.

"I love her," he whispered. "Even after what she did, I still love her."

"I know you do," Lena told him, rubbing his back.

"She was so mad at me," Mark said, still sobbing. Lena pulled a Kleenex out of the box and gave it to him. He blew his nose, then whispered, "I told her we had to stop."

"Why did you have to stop?" Lena whispered back.

"I never thought she needed me, you know? I thought she was stronger than me. Stronger than everybody." His voice caught. "And she wasn't."

Lena stroked the back of his neck, trying to soothe him. "What happened, Mark? Why did she end up hating you?"

"You think she hates me?" he asked, his eyes searching hers. "You really think she hates me?"

"No, Mark," Lena said, pushing his hair back out of his face. He had switched to present tense, something people often did when they could not accept that a loved one had died. Lena had found herself doing the same thing with her sister. "Of course she doesn't hate you."

"I told her I wouldn't do it anymore."

"Do what?"

He shook his head no. "It's all so pointless," he said, still shaking his head.

"What's pointless?" Lena asked, trying to make him look up at her. He did, and for a shocking moment, she thought he might try to kiss her. Quickly, she moved back on her heels, catching herself on the arm of the chair so she wouldn't fall. Mark must have seen the shock in her expression because he turned away from her, taking another tissue. Mark looked at Jeffrey as he blew his nose. Lena looked at neither of them. All she could think was that she had somehow crossed a line, but what that line was and where it had been drawn she could not figure.

Mark spoke to Jeffrey, and his voice had more authority to it. The kid who had broken down moments ago was gone. The surly teenager was back. "What else?"

"Jenny liked to study?" Jeffrey asked.

Mark shrugged.

Lena said, "Was she interested in other cultures, other religions?"

"What the fuck for?" Mark countered angrily. "It's not like we're ever gonna get out of this fucking town."

"That's a no, then?" Lena asked.

Mark pursed his lips, almost as if he was going to blow a kiss, then said, "Nope."

Jeffrey crossed his arms over his chest, taking back over. "Around Christmas, you stopped being friends with Jenny. Why?"

"Got tired of her," he shrugged.

"Who else did Jenny hang around with?"

"Me," Mark said. "Lacey. That was it."

"She didn't have other friends?"

"No," Mark answered. "And we weren't really even her friends." He laughed lightly. "She was all alone, I guess. Isn't that sad, Chief Tolliver?"

Jeffrey stared at Mark, not answering.

"If you don't have any more questions," Mark began, "I'd like you to go now."

"Do you know Dr. Linton?" Jeffrey asked.

He shrugged. "Sure."

"I want you at the children's clinic tomorrow by ten o'clock to give that blood sample." Jeffrey pointed his finger at Mark. "Don't make me come looking for you."

Mark stood, wiping his palms on his pants. "Yeah, what-ever." He looked down at Lena, who was still on the floor. She was at his crotch level, and he smiled, more like a sneer, when he noticed this.

Mark raised one eyebrow at her, his lips slightly parted in the same sly smile he had given her before, then left the room.