Lena put her head in her hands. She listened as Hank filled the kettle, heard the click as the electric starter on the gas stove kicked in.
Hank sat in front of her, his hands crossed in front of him. “You okay?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered, her own voice sounding far away. The gun had gone off close to her ear. The ringing had stopped a while ago, but sounds still came like a dull ache.
“You know what I was thinking?” Hank asked, sitting back in his chair. “Remember that time you fell off the front porch?”
Lena stared at him, not understanding where he was going with this. “Yeah?”
“Well.” He shrugged, smiling for some reason. “Sibyl pushed you.”
Lena wasn’t sure she had heard him right. “What?”
He assured Lena, “She pushed you. I saw her.”
“She pushed me off the porch?” Lena shook her head. “She was trying to keep me from falling.”
“She was blind, Lee, how did she know you were falling?”
Lena’s mouth worked. He had a point. “I had to get sixteen stitches in my leg.”
“I know.”
“She pushed me?” Lena questioned, her voice raised a few octaves. “Why did she push me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she was just kidding.” Hank chuckled. “You let out such a holler I thought the neighbors were gonna come.”
“I doubt the neighbors would’ve come if they’d heard a twenty-one-gun salute,” Lena commented. Hank Norton’s neighbors had learned early on to expect all kinds of commotion coming from his house night and day.
“Remember that time at the beach?” Hank began.
Lena stared at him, trying to figure out why he was bringing this up. “What time?”
“When you couldn’t find your kickboard?”
“The red one?” Lena asked. Then, “Don’t tell me, she pushed it off the balcony.”
He chuckled. “Nope. She lost it in the pool.”
“How can you lose a kickboard in the pool?”
He waved this off. “I guess some kid took it. The point was, it was yours. You told her not to take it and she did, and she lost it.”
Despite herself, Lena felt some of the weight on her shoulders lifting. “Why are you telling me this?” she asked.
Again, he gave a small shrug. “I don’t know. I was just thinking about her this morning. Remember that shirt she used to wear? The one with the green stripes?”
Lena nodded.
“She still had it.”
“No,” Lena said, surprised. They had fought over that shirt during high school until Hank had settled it with a coin toss. “Why did she keep it?”
“It was hers,” Hank said.
Lena stared at her uncle, not sure what to say.
He stood up, taking a mug from the cabinet. “You want some time to yourself, or do you want me around?”
Lena considered his question. She needed to be alone, to get some sense of herself back, and she could not do that around Hank of all people. “Are you going back to Reece?”
“I thought I’d stay at Nan’s tonight and help her sort through some things.”
Lena felt a slight panic. “She’s not throwing things away, is she?”
“No, of course not. She’s just going through things, getting her clothes together.” Hank leaned against the counter, his arms crossed. “She shouldn’t have to do that alone.”
Lena stared at her hands. There was something under her fingernails. She couldn’t tell if it was dirt or blood. She put her finger in her mouth, using her bottom teeth to clean it.
Hank watched this. He said, “You could come by later if you felt like it.”
Lena shook her head, biting the nail. She would tear it off to the quick before she let the blood stay there. “I have to get up early for work tomorrow,” she lied.
“But if you change your mind?”
“Maybe,” she mumbled around her finger. She tasted blood, surprised to see that it was her own. The cuticle had come away on the nail. A bright red dot radiated from the spot.
Hank stood, staring, then grabbed his coat off the back of his chair. They had been through this kind of thing before, though admittedly never on this scale. It was an old, familiar dance, and they both knew the moves. Hank took one step forward, Lena took two steps back. Now wasn’t the time to change any of this.
He said, “You can call me if you need me. You know that, right?”
“Mm-hm,” she mumbled, pressing her lips together. She was going to cry again, and Lena thought that a part of her would die if she broke down in front of Hank again.
He seemed to sense this because he put his hand on her shoulder, then kissed the top of her head.
Lena kept her head down, waiting for the click as the front door closed. She gave a long sigh as Hank’s car backed out of the driveway.
The kettle was steaming, but the whistle had not started yet. Lena did not particularly like tea, but she rummaged around in the cabinets anyway, looking for the bags. She found a box of Tummy Mint just as a knock came at the back door.
She expected to see Hank, so Lena was surprised when she opened the door.
“Oh, hi,” she said, rubbing her ear as a shrill noise came. She realized the teakettle was whistling and said, “Hold on a second.”
She was turning off the burner when she felt a presence behind her, then a sharp sting came to her left thigh.
17
Sara stood in front of the body of Julia Matthews with her arms crossed over her chest. She stared at the girl, trying to assess her with a clinical eye, trying to separate the girl whose life Sara had saved from the dead woman on the table. The incision Sara had made to access Julia’s heart was not yet healed, the black sutures still thick with dried blood. A small hole was at the base of the woman’s chin. Burns around the entrance wound revealed the barrel of the gun was pressed into the chin when it was fired. A gaping hole at the back of the girl’s head revealed the exit wound. Bone hung from the open skull, like macabre ornaments on a bloody Christmas tree. The smell of gunpowder was in the air.
Julia Matthews’s body lay on the porcelain autopsy table much as Sibyl Adams’s had a few days ago. At the head of the table was a faucet with a black rubber hose attached. Hanging over this was an organ scale much like the scales grocers use to weigh fruit and vegetables. Beside the table were the tools of autopsy: a scalpel, a sixteen-inch-long surgically sharpened bread knife, a pair of equally sharpened scissors, a pair of forceps, or “pickups,” a Stryker saw to cut bone, and a set of long-handled pruning shears one would normally find in a garage by the lawn mower. Cathy Linton had a similar set for herself, and whenever Sara saw her mother pruning azaleas she always thought about using the shears at the morgue to cut away the rib cage.
Sara mindlessly followed the various steps for preparing the body of Julia Matthews for autopsy. Her thoughts were elsewhere, back to the night before, when Julia Matthews was on Sara’s car; back to when the girl was alive and had a chance.
Sara had never minded performing autopsies before, never been disturbed by death. Opening a body was like opening a book; there were many things which could be learned from tissue and organ. In death, the body was available for thorough evaluation. Part of the reason Sara had taken the job as medical examiner for Grant County was that she had become bored with her practice at the clinic. The coroner’s job presented a challenge, an opportunity to learn a new skill and to help people. Though the thought of cutting up Julia Matthews, exposing her body to more abuse, cut through Sara like a knife.
Again, Sara looked at what was left of Julia Matthews’s head. Gunshots to the head were notoriously unpredictable. Most times the victim ended up comatose, a vegetable who, through the miracles of modern science, quietly lived out the rest of the life they did not want in the first place. Julia Matthews had done a better job than most when she put the gun under her chin and pulled the trigger. The bullet had entered her skull at
an upward trajectory, breaking the sphenoid, plowing along the lateral cerebral fissure, then busting out through the occipital bone. The back of the head was gone, affording a straight view into the brain case. Unlike in her earlier suicide attempt, witnessed by the scarring on her wrists, Julia Matthews had meant to end her life. Unquestionably, the girl had known what she was doing.
Sara felt sick to her stomach. She wanted to shake the girl back to life, to demand she go on living, to ask her how she could have gone through everything that had happened to her in the last few days only to end up taking her life. It seemed that the very horrors Julia Matthews had survived had also ended up killing her.
“You okay?” Jeffrey asked, giving her a concerned look.
“Yeah,” Sara managed, wondering if she really was. She felt raw, like a wound that would not scab. Sara knew that if Jeffrey made a pass at her, she would take him up on the offer. All she could think of was how good it would feel to let him take her into his arms, to feel his lips kissing hers, his tongue in her mouth. Her body ached for him now in a way she had not ached for him in years. She did not particularly want sex, she just wanted the assurance of his presence. She wanted to feel protected. She wanted to belong to him. Sara had learned a long time ago that sex was the only way Jeffrey knew how to give her these things.
From across the table, Jeffrey asked, “Sara?”
She opened her mouth, thinking to proposition him, but stopped herself. So much had happened in the last few years. So much had changed. The man she wanted did not really exist anymore. Sara wasn’t sure if he ever had.
She cleared her throat. “Yeah?”
“You want to hold off on this?” he asked.
“No,” Sara answered in a clipped tone, inwardly berating herself for thinking she needed Jeffrey. The truth was she didn’t. She had gotten this far without him. She could certainly go further.
She tapped her foot on the remote for the Dicta-phone, stating, “This is the unembalmed body of a thin but well-built, well-nourished young adult white female weighing”—Sara looked at the chalkboard over Jeffrey’s shoulder where she had made notations—“one hundred and twelve pounds and having a length of sixty-four inches.” She tapped the recorder off, taking a deep breath to clear her mind. Sara was having trouble breathing.
“Sara?”
She tapped the recorder back on, shaking her head at him. The sympathy she had so wanted a few minutes ago now irritated her. She felt exposed.
She dictated, “The appearance of the decedent is consistent with the stated age of twenty-two. The body has been refrigerated for a period of no less than three hours and is cool to the touch.” Sara stopped, clearing her throat. “Rigor mortis is formed and fixed in the upper and lower extremities, and patches of livor mortis are seen posteriorly on the trunk and extremities, except in areas of pressure.”
And on it went, this clinical description of a woman who only hours ago had been battered but alive, who weeks ago had been content if not happy. Sara cataloged the exterior appearance of Julia Matthews, imagining in her mind what the woman must have gone through. Was she awake when her teeth were pulled out so that her attacker could rape her face? Was she conscious when her rectum was being ripped open? Did the drugs block the sensations when she was nailed to the floor? An autopsy could only reveal the physical damage; the girl’s state of mind, her level of consciousness, would remain a mystery. No one would know what was going through her mind as she was assaulted. No one would ever see exactly what this girl had seen. Sara could only guess, and she did not like the images such guessing brought to mind. Again, she saw herself on the hospital gurney. Again, she saw herself being examined.
Sara forced herself to look up from the body, feeling shaky and out of place. Jeffrey was staring at her, a strange look on his face. “What?” she asked.
He shook his head, still keeping his eyes on her.
“I wish,” Sara began, then stopped, clearing the lump in her throat. “I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that, okay?” She waited, but he did not acknowledge her request.
He asked, “How am I looking at you?”
“Predatorily,” she answered, but that wasn’t quite right. He was looking at her the way she wanted him to look at her. There was a sense of responsibility to his expression, like he wanted nothing more than to take charge of things, to make things better. She hated herself for wanting this.
“It’s unintentional,” he said.
She snapped off her gloves. “Okay.”
“I’m worried about you, Sara. I want you to talk to me about what’s going on.”
Sara walked toward the supply cabinet, not wanting to have this conversation over the body of Julia Matthews. “You don’t get to do that anymore. Remember why?”
If she had slapped him, his expression would have been the same. “I never stopped caring about you.”
She swallowed hard, trying not to let this get to her. “Thanks.”
“Sometimes,” he began, “when I wake up in the morning, I forget that you’re not there. I forget that I lost you.”
“Kind of like when you forgot you were married to me?”
He walked toward her, but she stepped back until she was a few inches from the cabinet. He stood in front of her, his hands on her arms. “I still love you.”
“That’s not enough.”
He stepped closer to her. “What is?”
“Jeffrey,” she said. “Please.”
He finally backed away, his tone sharp as he asked, “What do you think?” He was referring to the body. “Do you think you’ll find anything?”
Sara crossed her arms, feeling the need to protect herself. “I think she died with her secrets.”
Jeffrey gave her a strange look, probably because Sara wasn’t one to buy into melodrama. She made a conscious effort to act more like herself, to be more clinical about the situation, but even the thought of doing this was too emotionally taxing.
Sara kept her hand steady as she made the standard Y-incision across the chest. The sound as she skinned back the flesh cut through her thoughts. She tried to talk over them. “How are her parents holding up?”
Jeffrey said, “You can’t imagine how horrible it was telling them she’d been raped. And then, this.” He indicated the body. “You can’t imagine.”
Sara’s mind wandered again. She saw her own father standing over a hospital bed, her mother embracing him from behind. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, willing this image from her mind. She would not be able to do this if she kept putting herself in Julia Matthews’s place.
“Sara?” Jeffrey asked.
Sara looked up, surprised to realize that she had stopped the autopsy. She was standing in front of the body, arms crossed in front of her. Jeffrey waited patiently, not asking her the obvious question.
Sara picked up the scalpel and went to work, dictating, “The body is opened with the usual Y-incision and the organs of the thoracic and abdominal cavities are in their normal anatomic positions.”
Jeffrey started talking again as soon as she stopped. Thankfully, he chose a different topic this time. He said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do about Lena.”
“What’s that?” Sara asked, glad for the sound of his voice.
“She’s not holding up well,” he said. “I told her to take a couple of days off.”
“Do you think she will?”
“I think she actually might.”
Sara picked up the scissors, cutting the pericardial sac with quick snips. “So, then, what’s the problem?”
“She’s at the edge. I can sense that. I just don’t know what to do.” He indicated Julia Matthews. “I don’t want her to end up doing something like this.”
Sara scrutinized him over the rim of her glasses. She did not know whether or not he was using dime store psychology, hiding his concern for Sara by pretending a concern for Lena, or if he really was looking for advice on how to handle Lena.
She gave him an a
nswer that would suit either scenario. “Lena Adams?” She shook her head no, certain of this one thing. “She’s a fighter. People like Lena don’t kill themselves. They kill other people, but they don’t kill themselves.”
“I know,” Jeffrey answered. He was quiet then as Sara clamped off and removed the stomach.
“This won’t be pleasant,” she warned, placing the stomach in a stainless steel bowl. Jeffrey had been through plenty of autopsies before, but there was nothing so pungent as the odors of the digestive tract.
“Hey.” Sara stopped, surprised at what she saw. “Look at this.”
“What is it?”
She stood to the side so that he could see the contents of the stomach. The digestive juices were black and soupy, so she used a strainer to scoop out the contents.
“What is it?” he repeated.
“I don’t know. Maybe seeds of some sort,” Sara told him, using a pair of pickups to remove one. “I think we should call Mark Webster.”
“Here,” he offered, holding out an evidence bag.
She dropped the seed into the bag, asking, “You think he wants to get caught?”
“They all want to get caught, don’t they?” he countered. “Look at where he left them. Both in semipublic places, both displayed. He’s getting off on the risk as much as anything else.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, willing herself not to say more. She did not want to go into the gritty details of the case. She wanted to do her job and get out of here, away from Jeffrey.
Jeffrey didn’t seem to want to comply. He asked, “The seeds are potent, right?”
Sara nodded.
“So, you think he kept her out of it while he was raping her?”
“I couldn’t begin to guess,” she answered truthfully.
He paused, as if he did not know how to phrase his next sentence.
“What?” she prompted.
“Lena,” he said. “I mean, Julia told Lena that she enjoyed it.”
Sara felt her brow furrow. “What?”
“Not exactly that she enjoyed it, but that he made love to her.”