“Here,” Jeffrey said, taking Sara’s arm as they approached the bank. The land was hilly, with a downward slope toward the river. A path had been worn into the ground by rain falloff, but the silt was porous and loose.
Sara judged that the bed was at least forty feet wide at this spot, but Jeffrey would have someone measure that later. The ground was parched beneath their feet, and she could feel grit and clay working their way into her tennis shoes as they kicked up dust walking toward the body. Twelve years ago they would have been up to their necks in water by now.
Sara stopped halfway to the scene, looking up at the bridge. The design was a simple concrete beam with a low railing. A ledge jutted out a couple of inches from the bottom, and between this and the railing, someone had spray-painted in black letters DIE NIGGER and a large swastika.
Sara got a sour taste in her mouth. She said derisively, “Well, that’s nice.”
“Ain’t it, though,” Jeffrey replied, just as disgusted as she was. “It’s all over campus.”
“When did it start?” Sara asked. The graffiti looked faded, probably a couple of weeks old.
“Who knows?” Jeffrey said. “The college hasn’t even acknowledged it.”
“If they acknowledged it, they’d have to do something about it,” Sara pointed out, looking over her shoulder for Tessa. “Do you know who’s doing it?”
“Students,” he said, giving the word a nasty spin as he resumed walking. “Probably a bunch of idiot Yankees who think it’s funny coming down south to play hicks and crackers.”
“I hate amateur racists,” Sara mumbled, putting on a smile as they approached Matt Hogan and Frank Wallace.
“Afternoon, Sara,” Matt said. He held an instant camera in one hand and several Polaroids in the other.
Frank, Jeffrey’s second in command, told her, “We just finished the pictures.”
“Thanks,” Sara told them, snapping on the latex gloves.
The victim was lying directly under the bridge, facedown on the ground. His arms were splayed out to the side and his pants and underwear were bunched up around his ankles. Judging from his size and the lack of hair on his smooth back and buttocks, he was a young man, probably in his twenties. His blond hair was long to the collar and parted on the back of his head. He could have been sleeping but for the splattering of blood and tissue coming out of his anus.
“Ah,” she said, understanding Jeffrey’s concern.
As a formality Sara knelt down and pressed her stethoscope to the dead boy’s back. She could feel and hear his ribs move under her hand. There was no heartbeat.
Sara looped the stethoscope around her neck and examined the body, calling out her findings. “There’s no sign of the kind of trauma you’d expect with forcible sodomy. No bruises, no lacerations.” She glanced up at his hands and wrists. His left arm was turned awkwardly, and she could see a nasty pink scar running up the forearm. From the look of it, the injury had happened within the last four to six months. “He wasn’t tied up.”
The young man was wearing a dark green T-shirt, which Sara lifted to check for further signs of damage. A long scrape was at the base of his spine, the skin broken, but not enough to bleed.
“What is it?” Jeffrey asked.
Sara did not answer, though something about the scrape seemed odd to her.
She picked up the boy’s right leg to move it aside but stopped when the foot did not come with it. Sara slid her hand under the pant leg, feeling for the bones of the ankle, then the tibia and fibula; it was like squeezing a balloon filled with oatmeal. She checked the other leg, finding the same consistency. The bones were not just broken, they were pulverized.
A set of car doors slammed, and Sara heard Jeffrey whisper, “Shit,” under his breath.
Seconds later Chuck Gaines walked down the bank, the shirt of his tan security uniform stretched tight across his chest as he tried to navigate the slope. Sara had known Chuck since elementary school, where he had teased her mercilessly about everything from her height to her good grades to her red hair, and she was just as happy seeing him now as she had been on the playground those many years ago.
Lena Adams stood beside Chuck wearing an identical uniform that was at least two sizes too big for her small frame. A belt kept the pants up, and, with her aviator sunglasses and hair tucked under a wide-brimmed baseball cap, she looked like a little boy playing dress-up in his father’s clothes, especially when she lost her footing on the bank and slid the rest of the way down on her bottom.
Frank moved to help her, but Jeffrey stopped him with a look of warning. Lena had been a detective—one of them—up until seven months ago. Jeffrey had not forgiven Lena for leaving, and he was bound and determined to make sure no one else under his command did either.
“Damn,” Chuck said, taking the last few steps at a jog. There was a light sheen of sweat over his lip despite the cool day, and his face was red from the effort of walking down the bank. Chuck was extremely muscular, but there was something unhealthy about him. He was always perspiring, and a thin layer of fat made his skin look tight and bloated. His face was round and moonish, his eyes a bit too wide. Sara did not know if this was from steroids or poor weight training, but he looked like a heart attack waiting to happen.
Chuck gave Sara a flirty wink, saying, “Hey, Red,” before jutting out his meaty hand toward Jeffrey. “How they hanging, Chief?”
“Chuck,” Jeffrey said, reluctantly shaking his hand. He gave Lena a cursory glance, then turned back to the scene. “This was called in about an hour ago. Sara just got here.”
Sara said, “Hey, Lena.”
Lena gave a slight nod, but Sara could not read her expression behind the dark sunglasses. Jeffrey’s disapproval of this exchange was obvious, and if they had been alone, Sara would have told him what he could do with it.
Chuck clapped his hands together, as if to assert his authority. “Whatcha got here, Doc?”
“Probably a suicide,” Sara answered, trying to remember how many times she had asked Chuck not to call her “Doc.” Probably not nearly as many times as she had asked him not to call her “Red.”
“That so?” Chuck asked, craning his neck. “Don’t it look to you like he’s been fiddled with?” Chuck indicated the lower half of the body. “Looks like it to me.”
Sara sat back on her heels, not answering. She glanced at Lena again, wondering how she was holding up. Lena had lost her sister a year ago this month, then gone through hell during the investigation. Even though Sara could think of a lot of things she did not like about Lena Adams, she would not wish Chuck Gaines on anyone.
Chuck seemed to realize no one was paying attention to him. He clapped his hands together again, ordering, “Adams, check the periphery. See if you can sniff up anything.”
Surprisingly, Lena acquiesced, walking downstream.
Sara looked up at the bridge, shielding her eyes from the sun. “Frank, can you go up there and look for a note or something?”
“A note?” Chuck echoed.
Sara addressed Jeffrey. “I imagine he jumped from the bridge,” she said. “He landed on his feet. You can see his shoe treads punched into the dirt. The impact pulled down his pants and broke most if not all of the bones in his feet and legs.” She looked at the tag on the back of the jeans, checking the size. “They were baggy, and the force from that height would be pretty substantial. I imagine the blood is from his intestines detaching. You can see where part of the rectum was turned inside out and forced from the anus.”
Chuck gave a low whistle, and before she could think to stop herself, Sara looked up at him. She saw his lips move as he read the racial epithet on the bridge. He flashed a bright, obvious smile at Sara before asking, “How’s your sister?”
Sara saw Jeffrey’s jaw lock as he gritted his teeth. Devon Lockwood, the father of Tessa’s child, was black.
“She’s fine, Chuck,” Sara answered, forcing herself not to rise to the bait. “Why do you ask?”
He flashed another smile, making sure she saw him looking at the bridge. “No reason.”
She kept staring at Chuck, appalled at how little had changed about him since high school.
“This scar on his arm,” Jeffrey interrupted. “It looks recent.”
Sara forced herself to look at the victim’s arm, but her anger caught in her throat when she answered, “Yes.”
“Yes?” Jeffrey repeated, a definite question behind the word.
“Yes,” Sara said, letting him know she could fight her own battles. She took a deep, calming breath before saying, “My best guess is it was deliberate, straight up the radial artery. He would’ve been taken to the hospital for that.”
Chuck was suddenly interested in Lena’s progress. “Adams!” he yelled. “Check up thataway.” He pointed away from the bridge, the opposite direction she had been heading.
Sara put her hands on the dead boy’s hips, asking Jeffrey, “Can you help me turn him?”
As she waited for Jeffrey to put on a pair of gloves, Sara searched the tree line for Tessa. There was no sign of her. For once Sara was grateful Tessa was in her car.
“Ready,” Jeffrey said, his hands on the dead boy’s shoulders.
Sara counted off, and they turned the body as carefully as they could.
“Oh, fuck,” Chuck squeaked, his voice going up three octaves. He stepped back quickly, as if the body had suddenly burst into flames. Jeffrey stood up fast, a look of total horror on his face. Matt gave what sounded like a dry heave as he turned his back to them.
“Well,” Sara said, for lack of anything better to say.
The bottom side of the victim’s penis had been almost completely skinned off. A four-inch flap of skin hung loosely from the glans, a series of dumbbell-style earrings piercing the flesh at staggered intervals.
Sara knelt by the pelvic area, examining the damage. She heard someone suck wind through his teeth as she stretched the skin back to its normal position, studying the jagged edges where the flesh had been ripped from the organ.
Jeffrey was the first to speak. “What the hell is that?”
“Body piercing,” she said. “It’s called a frenum ladder.” Sara indicated the metal studs. “They’re pretty heavy. The impact must have pulled the skin off like a sock.”
“Fuck,” Chuck muttered again, staring openly at the damage.
Jeffrey was incredulous. “He did this to himself?”
Sara shrugged. Genital piercings were hardly commonplace in Grant County, but Sara had dealt with enough piercing-related infections at the clinic to know that this sort of thing was out there.
“Je-sus,” Matt muttered, kicking at some dirt, still turned away from them.
Sara indicated a thin gold hoop piercing the boy’s nostril. “The skin is thicker here, so it didn’t pull out. His eyebrow . . .” She looked around on the ground, spotting another gold hoop pressed into the clay where the body had fallen. “Maybe the clasp popped open on impact.”
Jeffrey pointed to the chest. “What about here?”
A thin trickle of blood stopped about two inches below the boy’s right nipple, which was torn in two. Sara took a guess and rolled back the waistband of the jeans. Caught between the zip and a pair of Joe Boxers was a third hoop earring. “Pierced nipple,” she said, picking up the hoop. “Do you have a bag for this?”
Jeffrey took out a small paper evidence bag, holding it open for her, asking with great distaste, “Is that it?”
“Probably not,” she answered.
Cupping the young man’s jaw between her thumb and forefinger, Sara pressed open the mouth. She reached in carefully with her fingers, trying not to cut herself.
“His tongue was probably pierced, too,” she told Jeffrey, feeling the muscle. “It’s bisected at the tip. I’ll know when I get him on the table, but I imagine the tongue stud is in his throat.”
She sat back on her heels, removing her gloves and studying the victim as a whole rather than by his pierced parts. He was an average-looking kid except for the line of blood dribbling from his nose and pooling around his lips. A reddish blond goatee hugged his soft chin, and his sideburns were thin and long, curving around his jawline like a piece of multicolored yarn.
Chuck took a step forward for a better look, his mouth dropping open. “Aw, shit. That’s—Shit . . .” He groaned, thumping himself in the head. “I can’t remember his name. His mama works at the college.”
Sara saw Jeffrey’s shoulders slump at the news. The case had just gotten ten times more complicated.
From the bridge Frank yelled, “Found a note.”
Sara was surprised at the news, even though she had been the one to send Frank to search in the first place. Sara had seen a number of suicides in her time, and something about this one did not feel right.
Jeffrey was watching her closely, as if he could read her mind. He asked Sara, “You still think he jumped?”
Sara left it open, saying, “It looks that way, doesn’t it?”
Jeffrey waited a beat before deciding. “We’ll canvass the area.”
Chuck started to volunteer help, but Jeffrey smoothly cut him off, asking, “Chuck, can you stay here with Matt and get a picture of his face? I want to show it to the woman who found the body.”
“Uh . . .” Chuck seemed to be trying to think of an excuse, not because he did not want to stick around but because he did not want to take an order from Jeffrey.
Jeffrey motioned to Matt, who had finally turned back around. “Get some pictures.”
Matt gave a stiff nod, and Sara wondered how he would take pictures without looking at the victim. Chuck, on the other hand, could not look away. He had probably never seen a dead body before. Knowing what kind of person he was, Sara was not surprised by Chuck’s reaction. He could have been watching a movie for all the emotion he showed in his face.
“Here,” Jeffrey said, helping Sara stand.
“I’ve already called Carlos,” Sara told him, meaning her assistant at the morgue. “He should be here soon. We’ll know more from the autopsy.”
“Good,” Jeffrey said. He told Matt, “Try to get a good one of his face. When Frank gets down here, tell him to meet me by the cars.”
Matt gave him a salute, still not saying much.
Sara tucked her stethoscope into her pocket as they walked along the riverbed. She glanced up at the car, looking for Tessa. The sun struck the windshield at an angle, turning the glass into a bright mirror.
Jeffrey waited until they were out of Chuck’s earshot before asking, “What aren’t you saying?”
Sara paused, not knowing how to articulate her feelings. “Something about this doesn’t feel right.”
“That could be because of Chuck.”
“No,” she told him. “Chuck’s a jerk. I’ve known that for thirty years.”
Jeffrey allowed a smile. “Then what is it?”
Sara turned around to look at the boy on the ground, then back up at the bridge. “The scrape on his back. Why would he have that?”
Jeffrey suggested, “From the railing on the bridge?”
“How? The railing isn’t that high. He probably sat on it and swung his feet over.”
“There’s a ledge under the railing,” Jeffrey pointed out. “He could have scraped it on the way down.”
Sara kept staring at the bridge, trying to imagine the right scenario. “I know it sounds stupid, but if it was me, I wouldn’t want to hit myself on the way down. I would stand on the railing and jump out, away from the ledge. Away from everything.”
“Maybe he climbed down to the ledge and scraped his back on part of the bridge.”
“Check it for skin,” Sara suggested, though for some reason she doubted they would find anything.
“What about landing on his feet?”
“It’s not as unusual as you think.”
“You think he did that on purpose?”
“Jumped?”
“The thing.” Jeffrey indicated
his lower half.
“The piercing?” Sara asked. “He’s probably had it for a while. It’s well healed.”
Jeffrey winced. “Why would somebody do that to himself?”
“Supposedly it heightens sexual sensation.”
Jeffrey was skeptical. “For the man?”
“And the woman,” Sara told him, though the thought of it made her shudder.
She looked toward the car again, hoping to see Tessa. Sara had a clear view of the parking pad. Except for Brad Stephens and the witness, no one else was in sight.
Jeffrey asked, “Where’s Tessa?”
“Who knows?” Sara answered, irritated. She should have taken Tessa home instead of letting her tag along.
“Brad,” Jeffrey called to the patrolman as they walked up to the cars. “Did Tessa come back down the hill?”
“No, sir,” he answered.
Sara looked in the backseat of her car, expecting to see Tessa curled up for a nap. The car was empty.
Jeffrey asked, “Sara?”
“It’s okay,” Sara told him, thinking Tessa had probably started down the hill then had to go back up again. The baby had been tap-dancing on her bladder the last few weeks.
Jeffrey offered, “You want me to go look for her?”
“She’s probably just sitting down somewhere, taking a break.”
“You sure?” Jeffrey asked.
She waved him off, following the same path Tessa had walked up the hill. Students from the college jogged the trails in the woods, which led from one side of the town to the other. If Sara went east a mile or so, she would eventually run into the children’s clinic. West would take her to the highway, and north would dump her out on the opposite side of town, close to the Linton house. If Tessa had decided to walk home without letting anyone know, Sara was going to kill her.
The grade was steeper than Sara had imagined, and she stopped at the top of the hill to catch her breath. Trash littered the area, beer cans scattered like dead leaves. She looked back down at the parking pad, where Jeffrey was interviewing the woman who had found the body. Brad Stephens waved, and Sara waved back, thinking that if she was winded from the climb, Tessa must have been panting by now. Maybe Tessa had stopped to catch her breath before going back down. Maybe she had come across a wild animal. Maybe she had gone into labor. On this last thought, Sara turned back to the trees, following a worn trail into the woods. A few feet inside, she scanned the immediate area, looking for any sign of her sister.