The Bitterest Pill

Fifty-eight

The next morning, while Maryglenn was just rousing, he noticed a scar on her right leg he hadn’t seen before. Given the ferocity of their lovemaking, he wasn’t sure he would have noticed it if they had been in full sunlight. It was a long vertical scar on the front of her shin that ran from the base of her knee to the top of her ankle. On either side of the scar were tiny, faint dots of faded pink scar tissue.

“I was riding my bike,” she said, noticing him staring at her leg.

“You’re up.”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Car turned right into me. My leg was caught under the front tire. Compound fracture of my tibia, broken fibula, broken bones in my foot.” She gathered the blanket around her, clutched herself, and rocked gently as if to calm herself. “I had three surgeries and they had me in all sorts of gadgets to hold the bones in place while I healed. The scarring actually used to be much worse, but I had some cosmetic work done. I’m a little self-conscious about it, Jesse, so if you could stop staring...”

He kissed the top of her head. “You must’ve been in a lot of pain.”

“You can’t imagine. It’s a good thing we can’t remember pain. We can remember having it, but not the pain itself.”

Jesse realized he was rubbing his right shoulder. “Does it hurt anymore?”

“Sometimes, in damp weather,” she said. “But nothing like when it happened. I was drugged up for months. I don’t even like thinking about it.”

Before Jesse could respond, his cell phone buzzed in his pants pocket. His pants were on the floor next to the bed and the wood amplified the buzzing. He grabbed his pants, retrieved the phone, and saw the call was from Molly. Unlike the night before, Molly was about to go on duty now. If she was calling him this early, he couldn’t blow her off again.

“I’ve got to take this,” he said, walked into the bathroom, and closed the door behind him.

“Molly, what’s up?”

“Did you get my message last night?”

“No, sorry. What is it?”

Molly explained about her interviews and told Jesse that Ambrose North protested way too much.

“He didn’t let me get within twenty yards of Petra, but I saw her listening at the top of the stairs. She heard everything. When do you want to speak with her?”

“Asap. Call them up and tell them I want her and her lawyer in tonight.”

“You want me to call at this hour? It’s six-fifteen.”

“Time for polite manners is over,” he said. “How did the other interviews go?”

Molly detailed the call she received from Sara York.

“She says that Chris Grimm was involved with a female teacher at the high school.”

“That’s what my source says Heather Mackey told him.”

Molly was furious. “Why didn’t you tell me about that, Jesse?”

“Think, Crane. I heard this secondhand from a kid. I didn’t know if I could trust it. If it was true, we needed it to come out independently. I didn’t want any of your questions to lead the kids to a false conclusion or to spook them into silence. I also didn’t want to have them run back to the teacher to warn her. One of these kids knows who she is.”

“Okay, Jesse.”

“I’ll be in by seven.”

When he clicked off, he recalled the image of the scar on Maryglenn’s leg, remembered her admission that she had been drugged up for months following the accident. The alarm bells were blaring in his head. She fit the profile.

When he came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, he began gathering up his clothing to get dressed. She got out of bed, letting the blankets fall away from her body. She pressed herself against him, kissed his neck. He kissed her back.

“Aren’t you going to shower?” she asked when the kissing was done. “I can put up some coffee and join you.”

“Won’t you be late?”

“I’ll call in.”

“Sorry,” he said, buttoning his shirt. “I can’t. Duty calls. I’ll shower at home and then I’ve got to get to work.”

She looked at him sideways. “This about Chris Grimm?”

He half smiled at her, pulling on his pants. “I’ve already told you more than I should have.”

“One of the perks of sleeping with the police chief.”

Just now, Jesse didn’t find that particularly funny.