—
Sara had spent the last three and a half years perfecting her denial skills, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that it took a solid hour before she realized what a horrible mistake she had made by offering her services to Amanda Wagner. In that hour, she’d managed to drive home, shower, change her clothes and get all the way to the basement of City Hall East before the truth hit her like a sledgehammer. She had put her hand to the door marked GBI MEDICAL EXAMINER, then stopped, unable to open it. Another city. Another morgue. Another way to miss Jeffrey.
Was it wrong to say that she had loved working with her husband? That she had looked at him over the body of a gunshot victim or drunken driver and felt like her life was complete? It seemed macabre and foolish and all the things that Sara had thought she’d put behind her when she moved to Atlanta, but here she was again, her hand pressed against a door that separated life and death, incapable of opening it.
She leaned her back against the wall, staring at the painted letters on the opaque glass. Wasn’t this where they had brought Jeffrey? Wasn’t Pete Hanson the man who had dissected her husband’s beautiful body? Sara had the coroner’s report somewhere. At the time, it had seemed of vital importance that she have all the information pertaining to his death—the toxicology, the weights and measures of organ, tissue and bone. She had watched Jeffrey die back in Grant County, but this place, this basement under City Hall, was where everything that had made him a human being had been reduced, removed, redacted.
What was it, exactly, that had convinced Sara to bring herself to this place? She thought about the people she had come into contact with over the last few hours: Felix McGhee—the lost look on his pale face, his lower lip trembling as he searched the hospital corridors for his mother, insisting she would never leave him alone. Will Trent offering the child his handkerchief. Sara had thought that her father and Jeffrey were the only two men left on earth who carried them around anymore. And then Amanda Wagner, commenting on the funeral.
Sara had been so sedated the day Jeffrey was buried that she’d barely been able to stand. Her cousin had kept his arm around her waist, literally holding her up so that she could walk to Jeffrey’s grave. Sara had held her hand over the coffin that lay in the ground, her fingers refusing to release the clump of dirt she held. Finally, she had given up, clutching her fist to her chest, wanting to smooth the dirt onto her face, inhale it, climb into the earth with Jeffrey and hold him until her lungs could no longer draw breath.
Sara put her hand in the back pocket of her jeans, felt the letter there. She had folded it so many times that the envelope was tearing at the crease, showing the bright yellow of the legal paper inside. What would she do if one day it suddenly opened? What would she do if she happened to glance down one morning and saw the neat scrawl, the pained explanations or blatant excuses from the woman whose actions had led to Jeffrey’s death?
“Sara Linton!” Pete Hanson boomed as his foot hit the bottom stair. He was wearing a bright Hawaiian shirt, a style she recalled that he favored, and the expression on his face was a mix of delight and curiosity. “To what do I owe this tremendous pleasure?”
She told him the truth. “I managed to worm my way onto one of your cases.”
“Ah, the student taking over for the teacher.”
“I don’t think you’re ready to give all this up.”
He gave her a bawdy wink. “You know I’ve got the heart of a nineteen-year-old.”
Sara recognized the setup. “Still keep it in a jar over your desk?”
Pete guffawed as if he was hearing the line for the first time.
Sara thought she should explain herself, offering, “I saw one of the victims at the hospital last night.”
“I heard about her. Torture, assault?”
“Yes.”
“Prognosis?”
“They’re trying to get the infection under control.” Sara didn’t elaborate, but she didn’t need to. Pete saw his share of hospital patients who’d not responded to antibiotic treatment.
“Did you get a rape kit?”
“There wasn’t enough time pre-op, and post—”
“Spoils the chain of evidence,” he provided. Pete was up on his case law. Anna had been doused in Betadine, exposed to countless different environments. Any good defense attorney could find an expert witness who would argue that a rape kit taken after a victim had undergone the rigors of surgery was too contaminated to use as evidence.
Sara told him, “I managed to remove some splinters from under her nails, but I thought the best thing I could offer is a forensic comparison between the two victims.”
“Rather dubious reasoning, but I’m so happy to see you that I’ll overlook your faulty logic.”
She smiled; Pete had always been blunt in that polite, southern way—one of the reasons he made such a great teacher. “Thank you.”
“The pleasure of your company is more than enough reward.” He opened the door, ushering her inside. Sara hesitated, and he pointed out, “Hard to see from the hallway.”
Sara put on what she thought of as her game face as she followed him into the morgue. The smell hit her first. She had always thought the best way to describe it would be cloying, a word that made no sense until you smelled something cloying for yourself. The predominant odor wasn’t from the dead but from the chemicals used around them. Before scalpel touched flesh, the deceased were catalogued, X-rayed, photographed, stripped and washed down with disinfectant. A different cleaner was used to swab the floors, another to wash down the stainless steel tables; yet another chemical cleaned and sterilized the tools of autopsy. Together, they created an unforgettable, overly sweet smell that permeated your skin, lived in the back of your nose so that you didn’t realize it was there until you had been away from it for a while.
Sara followed Pete to the back of the room, feeling caught in his wake. The morgue was as far from the constant hustle of Grady as Grant County was from Grand Central. Unlike the endless treadmill of cases in the ER, an autopsy was a contained question that almost always had an answer. Blood, fluid, organ, tissue—each component contributed a piece to the puzzle. A body could not lie. The dead could not always take their secrets to the grave.
Almost two and a half million people die in America each year. Georgia is responsible for about seventy thousand of these deaths, less than a thousand of which are homicides. By state law, any unattended death—which is to say a person who dies outside of a hospital or nursing home—has to be investigated. Small towns that do not often see violent death, or communities that are so strapped for cash that the local funeral director fills in for the job of coroner, usually let the state handle their criminal cases. The majority of them end up in the Atlanta morgue. Which explained why half the tables were occupied with corpses in various stages of autopsy.
“Snoopy,” Pete said, calling to an elderly black man in scrubs. “This is Dr. Sara Linton. She’s going to be assisting me on the Zabel case. Where are we?”
The man didn’t acknowledge Sara as he told Pete, “X-rays are on the screen. I can bring her out now if you want.”
“Good man.” Pete went to the computer and tapped the keyboard. A series of X-rays came onto the screen. “Technology!” Pete exclaimed, and Sara could not help but be impressed. Back in Grant County, the morgue had been in the basement of the hospital, almost an afterthought. The X-ray machine was designed for living humans, unlike the setup here, where it didn’t really matter how much radiation shot into the dead body. The films were pristine, read on a twenty-four-inch flat-panel monitor instead of a lightbox that flickered enough to cause an epileptic fit. The single porcelain table Sara had used in Grant was no match for the rows of stainless steel gurneys behind her. She could see junior coroners and medical investigators bustling back and forth in the glassed-off hallway running beside the morgue. She realized that she and Pete were alone, the only living beings in the main autopsy suite.
“We cleared out all the other cases when we brought him in,” Pete said, and for a moment, Sara did not understand what he meant.
He pointed to an empty gurney, the last in the row. “This is where I worked on him.”
Sara stared at the empty table, wondering why the image didn’t flash in her head, that horrible vision of the last time she had seen her husband. Instead, all she saw was a clean gurney, the overhead light bouncing off the dull stainless steel. This is where Pete collected the evidence that had led to Jeffrey’s killer. This is where the case broke open, proving without a shadow of a doubt who was involved in his murder.
Standing here now, Sara had expected her memories to overwhelm her, but there was only calmness, a certainty of purpose. Good things were done here. People were helped, even in death. Particularly in death.
Slowly, she turned back to Pete, still not seeing Jeffrey, but feeling him, as if he was in the room with her. Why was that? Why was it that after three and a half years of begging her brain to come up with some sensation that might replicate what it felt like to have Jeffrey with her, being in the morgue had brought him to her in a flash?
Most cops hated sitting in on an autopsy, and Jeffrey was no exception, but he considered his attendance a sign of respect, a promise to the victim that he would do everything he could to bring the killer to justice. That was why he had become a cop—not just to help the innocent, but to punish the criminals who preyed upon them.
In all honesty, that was why Sara had taken the coroner’s job. Jeffrey hadn’t even heard of Grant County the first time she had walked into the morgue under the hospital, examined a victim, helped break a case. Many years ago, Sara had seen violence firsthand, had herself been the victim of a horrific assault. Every Y-incision she made, every sample she collected, every time she testified in court to the horrors she had documented, she had felt a righteous revenge burning in her chest.
“Sara?”
She realized she’d gone quiet. She had to clear her throat before she could tell Pete, “I had Grady send over the films of our Jane Doe from last night. She was able to speak before she went under. We think her name is Anna.”
He clicked through to the file, pulling up Anna’s X-rays onscreen. “Is she conscious?”
“I called the hospital before I got here. She’s still out.”
“Neurologic damage?”
“She pulled through the surgery, which is more than anyone expected. Reflexes are good, pupils are still nonreactive. There’s some swelling in her brain. They’ve got a scan scheduled for later today. It’s the infection that’s the real concern. They’re doing some cultures, trying to figure out the best way to treat it. Sanderson called in the CDC.”
“Oh, my.” Pete was studying the X-ray. “How much hand strength do you think that would take, ripping out the rib?”
“She was starved, dehydrated. I suppose that would’ve made it easier.”
“Tied down—couldn’t have put up much of a fight. But, still … goodness. Reminds me of the third Mrs. Hanson. Vivian was a body builder, you know. Biceps as big around as my leg. Quite a woman.”
“Thank you, Pete. Thank you for taking care of him.”
He gave her another wink. “You earn respect by giving it to others.”
She recognized the dictum from his lectures.
“Snoopy,” Pete pronounced as the man pushed a gurney through the double doors. Jacquelyn Zabel’s head showed above a white sheet, her skin purple with lividity from hanging upside down in the tree. The color was even darker around the woman’s lips, as if someone had smeared a handful of blueberries over her mouth. Sara noticed that the woman had been attractive, with only a few fine lines at the edges of her eyes to show age. Again, she was reminded of Anna, the fact that she, too, was a striking woman.
Pete seemed to be thinking the same thing. “Why is it that the more beautiful the woman, the more horrendous the crime?”
Sara shrugged. It was a phenomenon she’d seen as a coroner back in Grant County. Beautiful women tended to pay a heavier price where homicide was concerned.
“Put her in my spot,” Pete told his assistant.
Sara watched the expressionless way Snoopy approached his job, the methodical care he took as he angled the body toward an empty slot in the row. Pete was in the minority here; most of the people working in the morgue were either African-American or women. It was the same at Grady Hospital, which made sense, because Sara had noticed that the more horrible the job, the more likely a woman or minority was to do it. The irony was not lost on Sara that she was included in this mix.
Snoopy kicked down the brakes on the wheels and started to organize the various scalpels, knives and saws Pete would need over the next few hours. He had just pulled out a pair of large pruning shears that you normally find in the gardening section of a hardware store when Will and Faith walked into the room.
Will seemed nonplussed as they passed by open bodies. Faith, on the other hand, looked worse than she had when Sara had first seen her in the hospital. The woman’s lips were white, and she stared straight ahead as she walked past a man with his face peeled from his skull so the doctor could check for contusions.
“Dr. Linton,” Will began. “Thank you for coming. I know this is supposed to be your day off.”
Sara could only smile and nod, wondering at his formal tone. Will Trent sounded more like a banker with every passing minute. She was still having trouble reconciling the man with his job.
Pete held out a pair of gloves to Sara, but she demurred, saying, “I’m just here to observe.”
“Don’t want to get your hands dirty?” He blew into the glove to open it, sliding in his hand. “Wanna go to lunch after this? There’s a great new Italian place on Highland. I can print out a coupon from the web.”
Sara was about to beg off when Faith made a noise that caused them all to look her way. She waved her hand in front of her face, and Sara guessed that it was nothing more nefarious than her presence in the morgue that was causing Faith Mitchell’s skin to go ashen.
Pete ignored the reaction, telling Will and Faith, “Found plenty of sperm and fluids on the skin before we scrubbed her down. I’ll bag them with the rape kit and send them off.”
Will scratched his arm under his jacket sleeve. “I doubt our guy’s been caught before, but we’ll see what the computer kicks back.”
For the sake of procedure, Pete turned on the Dictaphone, giving the time and date, then saying, “This is the body of Jacquelyn Alexandra Zabel, a malnourished female, reportedly thirty-eight years of age. She was found in a wooded area near Route 316 in Conyers, which is located in the Georgia county of Rockdale, in the early hours of Saturday, April eighth. The victim was hanging from a tree, upside down, her right foot caught in the branches. There is an obvious broken neck and signs of severe torture. Performing the procedure is Pete Hanson. Attending are Special Agents Will Trent and Faith Mitchell, and the inimitable Dr. Sara Linton.”
He pulled back the sheet and Faith gasped. Sara realized that this was the first time she had seen the abductor’s handiwork. In the harsh light of the morgue, every injustice was on display: the dark bruises and welts, the rips in the skin, the black electrical burns that looked like powder but could never be wiped off. The body had been washed prior to examination, the blood scrubbed away, so that the waxy white of the skin stood in stark contrast to the injuries. Shallow slices crisscrossed the victim’s flesh, each cut deep enough to bleed but not bring about mortality. Sara guessed the cuts had been made by a razor blade or a very sharp, very thin knife.
“I need to—” Faith didn’t finish the sentence. She just turned on her heel and left. Will watched her go, shrugging an apology to Pete.
“Not her favorite part of the job,” Pete noted. “She’s a bit thin. The victim, that is.”
He was right. Jacquelyn Zabel’s bones were pronounced under her skin.
Pete asked Will, “How long was she held?”
He shrugged. “We’re hoping you can tell us.”
“Could be from dehydration,” Pete mumbled, pressing his fingers against the woman’s shoulder. He asked Sara, “What do you think?”
“The other victim, Anna, was in the same physical condition. He could have been giving them diuretics, withholding food and water. Starvation isn’t an unusual form of torture.”
“He certainly tried every other kind.” Pete sighed, puzzled. “The blood should tell us more.”
The examination continued. Snoopy laid down a ruler by the cuts and took photographs as Pete drew hatches on the sketch for the autopsy report, trying to approximate the damage. Finally, he put down the pen, peeling back the eyelids to check the color.
“Interesting,” he murmured, indicating Sara should look for herself. Absent a moist environment, the organs of a decomposing body would shrink, the flesh contracting away from any wounds. Sara found several holes in the sclera as she examined the eyes, tiny red dots that opened in perfect round circles.
“Needles or straight pins,” Pete guessed. “He pierced each eyeball at least a dozen times.”
Sara checked the woman’s eyelids, saw the holes went clean through. “Anna’s pupils were fixed and dilated,” she told him, taking a pair of gloves off the tray, slipping them on as she looked into the woman’s bloody ears. Snoopy had cleaned away the clots, but the canals were still coated in dried blood. “Do you have a—”
Snoopy handed her an otoscope. Sara pressed the tip into Zabel’s ear, finding the sort of damage she had seen only in child abuse cases. “The drum has been punctured.” She turned the head to check the other ear, hearing the broken vertebrae in the neck crunch from the movement. “This one, too.” She handed the scope to Pete so he could see.
“Screwdriver?” he asked.
“Scissors,” she suggested. “See the way the skin at the opening of the canal has been shaved off?”
“The pattern slants upwards, deeper at the top.”
“Right, because the scissors narrow at the point.”
Pete nodded, making more notes. “Deaf and blind.”
Sara made the obvious leap, opening the woman’s mouth. The tongue was intact. She pressed her fingers against the outside of the trachea, then used the laryngoscope Snoopy handed her to look down the throat. “The esophagus is raw. Smell that?”
Pete leaned down. “Bleach? Acid?”
“Drain cleaner.”
“I had forgotten your father is a plumber.” He pointed to a dark staining around the woman’s mouth. “See this?”
Blood always pooled to the lowest point of a dead body, leaving a stain on the skin called lividity. The face was a deep, dark purple from hanging upside down. It was hard to isolate the rash around her lips, but once Pete pointed it out, Sara could see where liquid had been poured into the mouth and dripped down the sides of the face as the victim gagged.
Pete palpated the neck. “Lots of damage here. It definitely looks like he had her drink some kind of astringent. We’ll see if it made it to her stomach when we cut her open.”
Sara startled when Will spoke; she had forgotten he was there. “It looked like she broke her neck in the fall. That she slipped.”
Sara remembered their earlier conversation, his certainty that Jacquelyn Zabel had been hanging in the tree while he looked for her on the ground. He had told her the woman’s blood was still warm. She asked, “Were you the one who took her down?”
Will shook his head. “They had to photograph her.”
“You checked her carotid for a pulse?” Sara asked.
He nodded. “The blood was dripping from her fingers. It was hot.”
Sara checked the woman’s hands, saw the fingernails had been broken, some ripped straight out of the nail beds. Per routine, photographs had been taken of the body before Snoopy had cleaned it. Pete knew what Sara was thinking. He indicated the computer monitor. “Snoopy, do you mind pulling up the pre-wash photos?”
The man did as he was asked, Pete and Sara standing over either shoulder. Everything was on the database, from the initial crime-scene photos to the more recent ones taken at the morgue. Snoopy had to click through them all, and Sara saw the original scene in quick succession, Jacquelyn Zabel hanging from the tree, her neck awkwardly bent to the side. Her foot was so firmly caught in the branches that they probably had to cut the limbs to get her down.
Snoopy finally reached the autopsy series. Blood caked the face, the legs, the torso. “There,” Sara said, pointing to the chest. They both returned to the body, and Sara stopped herself before reaching down. “Sorry,” she apologized. This was Pete’s case.
His ego seemed unharmed. He lifted the breast, exposing another crisscrossed wound. This one was deeper in the center of the X. Pete pulled down the overhead light, trying to get a closer look as he pressed the skin apart. Snoopy handed him a magnifying glass, and Pete leaned in even closer, asking Will, “You found a pocketknife at the scene?”
Will provided, “The only print was the victim’s, a latent on the case of the knife.”
Pete handed Sara the magnifying glass so she could see for herself. He asked Will, “Left or right hand?”
“I—” Will stopped, glancing back toward the door for Faith. “I don’t remember.”
“Was the print a thumb? Index?”
Snoopy had gone to the computer to pull up the information, but Will said, “Partial thumb on the butt of the knife.”
“Three-inch blade?”
“About.”
Pete nodded to himself as he made the notation on his diagram, but Sara wasn’t going to make Will wait for him to finish. “She stabbed herself,” she told him, holding the magnifying glass over the site, motioning him over. “See the way the wound is V-shaped at the bottom and flat on the top?” Will nodded. “The blade was upside down and moved in an upward trajectory.” Sara made the motion, stabbing herself in the chest. “Her thumb was on the butt of the knife, driving it in deeper. She must have dropped it, then fallen. Look at her ankle.” She indicated the slight marks around the base of the fibula. “The heart had stopped beating when her foot caught. The bones were broken, but there’s no swelling, no sign of trauma. There would be serious bruising if the blood was still circulating when she fell.”
Will shook his head. “She wouldn’t have—”
“The facts bear it out,” Sara interrupted. “The wound was self-inflicted. It would’ve been fast. She didn’t suffer for long.” Sara felt the need to add, “Or much longer than she already had.”
Will’s eyes locked with hers, and Sara had to force herself not to look away. The man may not have looked like a cop, but she was certain he thought like one. Whenever an open case stopped moving forward, any policeman worth his salt took the time to beat himself up for making an ill-timed decision, missing an obvious clue. Will Trent would be doing that now—searching for ways to blame himself for the death of Jacquelyn Zabel.
Sara said, “Your time to help her is now. Not back in that forest.”
Pete put down his pen. “She’s right.” He pressed his hands against the chest. “Feels like there’s a lot of blood in here, and she made a damn lucky guess about where to sink the blade. Probably hit the heart immediately. I’d agree that the break in the foot as well as the neck came postmortem.” He slipped off a glove as he walked to the computer and pulled up the crime-scene photos. “Look at how her head seems to be resting against the branches, tilted. That’s not what happens when you snap your neck during a fall. It would be pressed hard against the offending object. When you’re alive, your muscles are taught to prevent such an injury. It’s a violent event, not a gentle twisting. Good call, kiddo.”
Pete beamed at Sara, and she felt herself blush with a student’s pride.
“Why would she kill herself?” Will asked, as if the tortured woman had had everything to live for.
Pete supplied, “She was probably blind, most certainly deaf. I’m surprised she was able to make it up the tree. She wouldn’t have heard the searchers, would have no idea that you were looking for her.”
“But she—”
“The infrared on the helicopters didn’t pick up her signature,” Pete interrupted. “But for you being out there, just happening to look up, I imagine the only way you would have found her body is tracking down a DRT call come deer season.”
Dead Right There, he meant. All police agencies had their slang, some of it more colorful than others. Hunters were notorious for calling in bodies they’d found DRT.
Pete turned to Sara. “Do you mind?” he asked, nodding toward the bag for the rape kit. Snoopy was an excellent assistant, but Sara got the message: She was back to being an observer. She peeled off her gloves and opened the kit, laying out the swabs and vials. Pete picked up the speculum, pressing open the legs so he could insert it into the vagina.
As with some violent rapes that resulted in homicide, the vaginal walls had stayed clenched postmortem, and the plastic speculum broke as Pete tried to pry it open. Snoopy handed him a metal speculum, and Pete tried again, his hands shaking as he forced open the clamp. It was rough to watch, and Sara was glad that Faith was not there as the wrenching sound of metal parting flesh filled the room. Sara handed Pete a swab, and he inserted the cotton-tipped stick, only to meet resistance.
Pete bent over, trying to find the obstruction. “Dear Lord,” he mumbled, his hand scattering the tray of tools as he snatched up a pair of thin-nosed forceps. His voice was absent any charm as he told Sara, “Glove up—help me with this.”
Sara snapped on the gloves, wrapping her hands around the speculum as he reached in with the forceps, which were nothing more than a long pair of tweezers. The tips grabbed something, and he pulled back his arm. A long, single piece of white plastic came out, like a silk cloth from a magician’s sleeve. Pete kept pulling, layering the plastic into a large bowl. Section after section came, each streaked in dark, black blood, each connected to the next in a perforated line.
“Trash bags,” Will said.
Sara could not breathe. “Anna,” she said. “We need to check Anna.”