AT TWENTY-EIGHT weeks old, Jenny Weaver’s child might have been viable outside the womb had its mother not tried to flush it down the toilet. The fetus was well-developed and well-nourished. The brain stem was intact and, with medical intervention, the lungs would have matured over time. The hands would have learned to grasp, the feet to flex, the eyes to blink. Eventually, the mouth would have learned to speak of something other than the horrors it spoke of to Sara now. The lungs had taken breath, the mouth gasped for life. And then it had been killed.
For the past three-and-a-half hours, Sara had tried to reassemble the baby from the parts Jenny Weaver had left in the bathroom and in the red book bag they found in the trash by the video game room. Using tiny sutures instead of the usual baseball stitches, Sara had sewn the paper-thin flesh back together into the semblance of a child. Her hands shook, and Sara had redone some of the knots because her fingers were not nimble enough on the first try.
Still, it was not enough. Working on the child, tying the tiny sutures, was like pulling a thread on a sweater. For every area repaired, there was another that could not be concealed. There was no disguising the trauma the child had been through. In the end, Sara had finally accepted that her self-appointed task was an exercise in futility. The baby would go to the grave looking much the way she had looked the last time her mother had seen her.
Sara took a deep breath, reviewing her report again before signing off on her findings. She had not waited for Jeffrey or Frank to begin the autopsy. There had been no witnesses to the cutting and dissecting and reassembling Sara had performed. She had excluded them on purpose, because she did not think she could do this job while other people watched.
A large window separated Sara’s office from the outer morgue, and she sat back in her chair, staring at the black body bag resting on the autopsy table. Her mind wandered, and she saw an alternative to the death she had been assessing. Sara saw a life of laughing and crying and loving and being loved, and then she saw the truth: Jenny’s baby would never have these things. Jenny herself had barely had these things.
Since an ectopic pregnancy several years ago, Sara had been unable to have children. This had been hard news to bear at the time, but over the years the loss had dulled itself with other things, and Sara had learned to stop wanting what she knew she would never have. Yet there was something about the unwanted child on the table, the child whose own mother had taken her life, that stirred up these emotions in Sara again.
Sara’s job was taking care of children. She held them in her arms, cradled them, and cooed at them the way she would never be able to with her own child. Sitting in the morgue, staring at the black bag, that longing to carry a baby came back with startling clarity, and with it came an emptiness that made her chest feel hollow.
There were footsteps on the stairs, and Sara sat up, wiping her eyes, trying to collect herself. She pushed her palms against the top of her desk and forced herself to stand as Jeffrey walked into the morgue. Sara was looking for her glasses, trying to compose herself, when she noticed that Jeffrey had not come directly into her office, as he normally did. Through the glass, she could see that he had stopped in front of the black bag. If he saw Sara, Jeffrey did not acknowledge her. Instead, he leaned over the table, his hands behind his back. Sara wondered what he was thinking, wondered if he was considering the life the baby could have had. Wondered, too, if Jeffrey was considering the fact that Sara could never give him children.
Sara cleared her throat as she walked into the room, holding the autopsy report to her chest. She slid the chart onto the edge of the table and stood across from Jeffrey, the baby between them. The bag was too large for the baby and it gaped open around the body like a blanket because Sara had not had the emotional strength to zip the child into more darkness and place her on a shelf in the freezer.
There was nothing she could think to say, so Sara was quiet. She tucked her hand into the pocket of her lab coat, surprised to find her glasses there. She was putting them on when Jeffrey finally spoke.
“So,” he said, his voice gravelly and low as if he had not used it much lately. “This is what happens when you try to flush a baby down the toilet.”
She felt her heart stop at his callousness, and did not know how to respond to it. She slipped off her glasses and rubbed the lenses with the tail of her shirt to give herself something to do.
Jeffrey took a deep breath and let it go slowly. She leaned in closer, thinking she smelled alcohol, knowing this could not be the case because Jeffrey seldom drank more than the occasional beer while watching Saturday college football.
“Tiny feet,” he mumbled, his eyes still on the body. “Are they always that small?”
Again, Sara did not answer. She looked at the feet, the ten toes, the wrinkled skin on the soles. These were the kind of feet a mother would kiss. These toes were the kind of toes a mother would count each day the way a gardener counts blooms on a rose bush.
Sara bit her lip, trying not to let herself go again. The emptiness in her chest was almost overwhelming, and she put her hand over her heart without thinking.
When Sara was finally able to look up, Jeffrey was staring at her. His eyes were bloodshot, tiny red lines shooting out from his irises. He seemed to be having trouble holding himself up. She did not know if this was from alcohol or grief.
“I thought you didn’t drink,” she said, aware there was an accusatory tone to her voice.
“I thought I didn’t shoot children, either,” he said, staring somewhere over her shoulder.
Sara wanted to help him, but she felt paralyzed by her own grief.
“Frank,” Jeffrey said. “He gave me a shot of whiskey.”
“Did it help?”
His eyes watered, and she watched him fighting this. His jaw worked and he gave a humorless smile.
“Jeffrey—”
He shook off her concern, asking, “Did you find anything?”
“No.”
“I don’t—” He stopped, looking down, but not at the child. His eyes were focused on the tiled floor. “I don’t know how to behave,” he finally said. “I don’t know what I should be doing.”
Something in his tone cut Sara deep down. To see him broken like this hurt her more than the pain she was experiencing herself. She walked around the table and put her hand on his shoulder, but he would not turn toward her.
He asked, “Did you think she was going to shoot him?”
Sara felt a lump in her throat, because she had not let herself consider this question up until now. Jenny’s back had been to Sara. Only Jeffrey, Lena, and Brad had a clear view of the scene.
“Sara?”
The way Jeffrey was looking at her, Sara knew that now was not the time for equivocation.
“Yes,” she answered, making her voice firm. “It was a clean shot, Jeffrey. You had to take it.”
Jeffrey walked away from her. He turned and leaned his back against the wall, asking, “Mark is probably the father, right?” He rested his head against the wall. “The boy she was going to shoot?”
Sara put her hands in her pockets, made her feet stay flat on the ground so that she would not walk over to him. She said, “It would make sense.”
“His parents won’t let us interview him until tomorrow. Did you know that?”
She shook her head slowly side to side. Mark wasn’t under suspicion for anything. It wasn’t as if Jeffrey could arrest the kid for having a gun pointed at his chest.
“They say he’s been through enough.” Jeffrey let his head drop down. “What would make her do something like that? What has she been through that would make her think…?” His voice trailed off as he looked back up at Sara. “She was one of yours, right?”
“They moved here about three years ago.” Sara paused, trying to shift gears. She knew that it would help Jeffrey more to talk this through like any other case rather than to dwell on the horror of his involvement. At this moment in time, it was irrelevant that this wasn’t what she needed.
He asked, “Where from?”
“I think they were from up North somewhere. Her mother moved down here after what sounded like a nasty divorce.”
“How do you know this?”
“Parents tell me things.” She paused. “I didn’t know Jenny was pregnant. I don’t think she’s been in for at least six months, maybe more.” Sara put her hand to her chest. “She was such a sweet kid. I never would have imagined that she’d do something like this.”
He nodded, rubbing his eyes. “Tessa’s not sure she can I.D. anybody from the restroom. Brad’s gonna take over one of the yearbooks from the school, see if anybody looks familiar. I want you to look, too.”
“Of course.”
“It was so packed,” he said, obviously meaning the skating rink. “People left before giving statements. I don’t know if we’ll be able to track everyone down.”
“Did you get anything?”
He shook his head no. “You’re sure only two people went into the bathroom? Jenny and one other?”
“That’s all I saw,” Sara answered, though after tonight she did not know how she could ever be sure of anything again. “I didn’t see her. I suppose if she was in my practice I would have recognized her. I guess.” Sara stopped, trying to remember, but nothing new popped into her head. “She was tall, maybe wearing a baseball cap.”
He looked up at this. “You remember the color?”
“It was dark, Jeffrey,” Sara answered, knowing she was letting him down. She understood now why so many witnesses willingly gave false testimony. She felt stupid and useless for not knowing who the other girl was. Her mind tried to compensate for this by throwing out random bits of information that could or could not be real memories.
Sara said, “I’m not even sure if it was a baseball cap, now that I’m thinking about it. I wasn’t paying attention.” She tried to smile. “I was looking for you.”
He did not smile back. Instead, he said, “I talked to her mother.”
“What did you say?”
His flippant tone was back. “‘I shot your daughter, Mrs. Weaver. Sorry about that.’”
Sara chewed her bottom lip. In a larger county, Jeffrey would not have been in charge of notification; he would be off the job pending an investigation. Of course, Grant County was far from large. All the responsibility rested squarely on his shoulders.
“She didn’t want the autopsy,” he said. “I had to explain to her that she didn’t really have a choice. She said it was…” He paused. “She said it was killing her twice.”
Sara felt guilt settle into the pit of her stomach.
“She called me a baby killer,” he said. “I’m a baby killer now.”
Sara shook her head no. “You didn’t have a choice,” she said, knowing this was true. She had made love to this man, shared her life with him. There was no way he had misjudged.
Sara said, “You followed procedure.”
He gave a derisive laugh.
“Jeff—”
“You think she would have done it?” he asked again. “I don’t think she would have, Sara. I’m thinking back on it, and maybe she would have walked away. Maybe she would have—”
“Look at this,” Sara interrupted, indicating the table. “She killed her own child, Jeffrey. Do you think she wouldn’t have killed the father, too?”
“We’ll never know, will we?”
Silence came like a thick cloud. The morgue was in the basement of the hospital, a tiled room with an institutional feel. The compressor on the freezer was the only noise, and it turned off with a loud click that echoed against the walls.
“Was the baby alive?” Jeffrey asked. “When she was born, was she alive?”
“She wouldn’t have survived long without medical help,” Sara said, not answering his question. For some reason, she wanted to protect Jenny.
“Was the baby alive?” he repeated.
“She was very small,” she said. “I don’t think she would have…”
Jeffrey walked back to the table. He tucked his hands into his pockets as he stared at the baby. “I want…,” he began. “I want to go home. I want you to go home with me.”
“Okay,” she answered, hearing his words but not sure she understood what he wanted.
He said, “I want to make love to you.”
Sara’s eyes must have registered her shock.
“I want to—” He stopped himself midsentence.
Sara stared at him, a sinking feeling in her chest. “You want to make a baby.”
The look in his eyes told her this had been the last thing on his mind. Sara felt a flush of humiliation. Her heart jumped into her throat, and she could not speak.
He shook his head, “That’s not what I was going to say.”
Sara turned away from him, her cheeks burning. She could not think of words to cover what she had already said.
He said, “I know you can’t—”
“Forget about it.”
“It’s just that I—”
She was mad at herself, not Jeffrey, but when she spoke to him, her tone was sharp. “I said forget about it.”
Jeffrey waited a few beats, obviously looking for the right thing to say. When he finally spoke, his tone was plaintive and sad. “I want to go back about five hours, okay?” He waited for her to turn around. “I want to be back in that stupid fucking skating rink with you, and when my pager goes off, I want to throw it in the fucking trash.”
Sara stared at him, not trusting herself to speak.
“That’s what I want, Sara,” he repeated. “I wasn’t thinking about the other. What you said—”
She stopped him, holding up her hand. There were footsteps on the stairs, two sets of them. Sara walked into her office, drying her eyes as she went. She tugged a Kleenex out of the box on her desk and blew her nose, then counted to a slow five, bracing herself, swallowing back the humiliation she felt.
When she turned around, detective Lena Adams and Brad Stephens were in the morgue, standing by Jeffrey, who by his look had managed to mask his emotions much as Sara had. All three of them had their hands clasped behind their backs the way cops do when they’re at a scene so they won’t accidentally contaminate anything. In that moment, Sara hated them all, even Brad Stephens, who was as harmless as a fly.
“Hey, Dr. Linton,” Brad said, taking off his hat as she walked into the room. His face was paler than usual and there were tears in his eyes.
“Will you…?” Sara began, then had to stop. She cleared her throat. “Will you please go upstairs and get some sheets for me?” she asked. “Bed sheets. About four of them.” Sara did not need the sheets, but Brad had been one of her patients. She still felt the need to protect him.
Brad gave her a smile, obviously glad to have something to do. “Yes, ma’am.”
After he had left, Lena asked in a matter-of-fact way, “Have y’all already done the baby?”
Jeffrey answered, “Yes,” even though he had not been there. He noticed the chart at the end of the table and picked it up. Sara did not say anything as he took his pen out of his breast pocket and scribbled his signature along the bottom of the autopsy report. Technically, Sara had violated several laws by performing the autopsy without at least one witness.
“Is the girl in the freezer?” Lena asked, walking toward the door. There was a cavalier bounce to her walk, as if what Lena was seeing was a common occurrence. Sara knew Lena had been through a lot recently, but she still felt angry at the other woman’s attitude.
“Here?” Lena prompted, her hand on the freezer door.
Sara nodded, not moving. Jeffrey walked over to help Lena, and Sara zipped the bag closed around the baby before she could stop herself. Her heart was pounding like a drum in her chest by the time Lena and Jeffrey rolled the gurney containing Jenny Weaver’s body into the room. They both braked the wheels by the table, waiting for Sara to move the bag. Finally, Jeffrey scooped the large black bag into his arms. Sara looked away as he cradled what was obviously the head with his hand. The loose ends of the bag dragged the floor as he walked toward the freezer.
Lena made a point of looking at her watch. Sara wanted to slap her, but instead she walked over to the metal supply cabinet beside the sinks. She opened a sterile pack and slipped on a gown, glancing over her shoulder at the freezer, wondering what was taking Jeffrey so long. Sara was helping Lena move the body onto the table when he finally emerged.
“Here,” he said, taking Lena’s place as they maneuvered the body of Jenny Weaver onto the white porcelain table. Weaver was a large girl, and the hoses at the head of the table rattled as they moved her into place.
Sara propped the head up on a black block, trying to think of herself as a coroner rather than the girl’s pediatrician. In her ten years as Grant’s medical examiner, there had been only four cases where Sara had known the deceased. Jenny Weaver was the first victim who had also been a patient at the clinic.
Sara rolled over a fresh tray with clean instruments, making sure she had everything that she needed. The two hoses at the head of the table were used to evacuate the body during examination. Over this was a large scale for weighing organs. At the foot was a tray for dissecting. The table itself was concave in shape, with high sides to keep matter from spilling over and a pronounced downward slant toward a large brass drain.
Carlos, Sara’s assistant at the morgue, had placed a white sheet over Jenny Weaver’s body. A medium-sized red dot spread out over the part that covered her throat. Sara had let Carlos take care of Jenny while she worked on the child. He had taken the X rays and prepared Jenny for autopsy while Sara had tried in vain to do something right for the baby. If Carlos was surprised when Sara told him to go home when he was finished with Jenny, he did not say.
Sara folded back the sheet, stopping just above the girl’s chest. The wound was far from clean and most of the right side of her neck dangled like pieces of raw meat. Cartilage and bone stood out from the black blood that had clotted around the wound.
Sara walked over to the light box on the wall and turned it on. The light flickered, then showed the X rays Carlos had taken of Jenny Weaver.
She studied the films carefully, at first not understanding what she was seeing. She checked the name on the chart again before calling out her findings. “You can see here there are faded lines of a fracture to the left humerus, which I would date at less than a year old. It’s not a typical fracture, especially for someone who was not athletic, so I’m assuming it came from some kind of abuse.”
“Did you treat her for this?” Jeffrey asked.
“Of course not,” Sara answered. “I would have reported it. Any doctor would have reported it.”
“Okay,” Jeffrey said, holding up his hands. Her tone must have been sharper than Sara realized, because Lena seemed to be taking a sudden interest in the floor.
Sara turned back to the X ray. “There’s also evidence of trauma around the costal cartilage, which is here in the rib.” She pointed to the chest film. “Up here, near the sternum, there’s bruising that’s consistent with a hard push or shove, moving posteriorly. That’s to the back.” She let this sink in, wondering if Jenny had seen another doctor for this. A first-year resident would recognize something was not right with this kind of injury.
Sara said, “I would guess the person who did this was taller than her. It’s recent, too.”
Sara popped a new X ray into the light box. She crossed her arms over her chest, studying the film. “This is the pelvic girdle,” she explained. “Note the fade line here against the ischium. This would indicate traumatic pressure to the pubis. It’s what’s commonly referred to as a stress fracture.”
“Stress from what?” Jeffrey asked.
Sara was surprised when Lena provided the answer to Jeffrey.
“She was raped,” Lena said, the same way she might say the girl’s eyes were blue. “Raped hard. Right?”
Sara nodded, and was about to say something else when she heard footsteps on the stairs again. She guessed from the sloppy lope that Brad had returned.
“Here you go,” Brad said, walking backward through the door. He held an armful of sheets, his hat dangling from his hand.
Sara stopped him, asking, “Did you get pillowcases?”
“Oh,” Brad said, surprised. He shook his head. “Sorry, no.”
“I think they’re on the top floor,” Sara said. “Could you get at least four?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, setting the sheets down on a table by the door.
Lena crossed her arms as he left. “He’s not twelve,” she said.
Jeffrey spoke to Lena for the first time since she had entered the morgue, giving her an uncharacteristic, “Shut up.”
Lena colored, but she was silent; also out of character.
“The bruising on her chest couldn’t really be treated with anything other than Tylenol,” Sara continued. “The pelvic fracture could heal on its own. It might explain why she had weight gain recently. It would be hard for her to get around.”
Jeffrey asked, “You think the boyfriend was abusing her?”
“Someone was,” Sara said, looking over the films again, trying to see if she had missed anything. All the times she had seen Jenny Weaver, Sara had never suspected child abuse. How the child had kept it hidden, and why, Sara did not know. Of course, it wasn’t as if Sara ordered X rays for sore throats, Jenny didn’t take off her clothes, evidently and Jenny had never taken off her clothes for an examination. Teenage girls were very sensitive about their bodies, and Sara had always slipped her stethoscope under Jenny’s shirt to listen to her chest and lungs so the girl would not be embarrassed.
Sara walked over to the table to resume the preliminary examination. Her hands shook slightly as she pulled back the sheet, and Sara was so absorbed in trying to get her hands to stop shaking that she did not notice what she was uncovering.
“Holy shit,” Lena said, giving another low whistle.
Jeffrey did not reprimand her this time, though, and Sara understood why. There were small cuts across the girl’s body, specifically on her arms and legs. The wounds were at various stages of healing, but some of them looked as recent as the last few days.
“What happened?” Jeffrey asked. “Was she trying to kill herself?”
Sara looked at the slices marking the skin. None of them was across the wrist or in places that would be apparent to anyone who was not looking for something specific. This would at least explain why the girl was wearing a long-sleeved shirt in the middle of summer. Thin rows of very deep cuts lined Jenny’s left forearm, starting about three inches from the wrist and where the sleeve might have rolled up. Dark scars indicated that the injuries were a common occurrence. The leg cuts were much deeper, and seemed to have a crisscross pattern to them. Sara could guess from the scarring that the deeper cuts radiated from the knee to the thigh. The girl had done this to herself.
“What is this?” Jeffrey asked, though he must have known.
“Cutting,” Lena provided.
“Self-injuring,” Sara corrected her, as if that made it any better. “I’ve seen it at the clinic before.”
“Why?” Jeffrey asked. “Why would someone do this?”
“Stupidity, for the most part,” Sara told him, feeling anger well into her stomach. How many times had she seen this girl? How many signs had Sara missed? “Sometimes they just want to know what it feels like. Usually they’re just acting out, not thinking about the consequences. This, though,” she stopped, staring at the deep cuts along Jenny’s left thigh. “This is something else. She hid them, she didn’t want people to know.”
“Why?” Jeffrey repeated. “Why would she do this?”
“Control,” Lena answered him, and Sara did not like the look she was giving the child. It was almost respectful.
“It’s a deep psychosis,” Sara countered. “Usually bulimics or anorexics do it. It’s a form of self-loathing.” She gave Lena a purposeful look. “Usually something sets it off. Abuse or rape, for instance.”
Lena held her gaze for just a second before looking away.
Sara continued, “There are other things that can lead to it, too. Substance abuse, mental illness, problems at school or at home.”
Sara walked over to the supply cabinet and took out a plastic speculum. After slipping on a second pair of gloves, she unwrapped the speculum and clicked it open. Lena cringed slightly at the sound, and Sara was thankful that the detective was capable of showing a little emotion.
Sara walked down to the foot of the body and propped the feet apart. She stopped suddenly, her mind not accepting what her eyes saw. She dropped the speculum on the table.
Lena asked, “What is it?”
Sara did not answer. She had thought that after tonight nothing could shock her. She had been so wrong.
“What is it?” Lena repeated.
“She hasn’t given birth to a child,” Sara answered. “Any child.”
Jeffrey indicated the unused speculum. “How can you be sure without completely examining her?”
Sara stared at them both, not sure how to say this. “Her vagina has been sewn shut,” she finally told them. “From the rate of healing, I’d say it’s been that way for at least six months.”