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 answer 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.”
“He pulled her teeth out and ripped her rectum open. How could anyone call what he did to her making love?”
He shrugged, as if the answer was lost on him, but said, “Maybe he kept her so drugged up that she didn’t feel it. Maybe she didn’t know what was going on until after.”
Sara considered this. “It’s possible,” she said, uncomfortable with the scenario.
“It’s what she said, anyway,” he answered.
The room was quiet but for the compressor on the freezer cycling down. Sara went back to the autopsy, using clamps to section off the small and large intestines. They were limp in her hands, like wet spaghetti, as she lifted them out of the body. Julia Matthews had not eaten anything of substance during the last few days of her life. Her digestive system was relatively empty.
“Let’s see,” Sara said, placing the intestines on the grocer’s scale to weigh them. A metallic clink came, like a penny being dropped into a tin cup.
“What’s that?” Jeffrey asked.
Sara did not answer him. She picked the intestines back up, then dropped them again. The same noise came, a tinny vibration through the scale. “Something’s in there,” Sara mumbled, walking over to the light box mounted on the wall. She used her elbow to turn on the light, illuminating Julia Matthews’s X rays. Her pelvic series was in the center.
“See anything?” Jeffrey asked.
“Whatever it is, it’s in the large intestines,” Sara answered, staring at what looked like a splinter in the bottom half of the rectum. She had not noticed the sliver before or had assumed it was a problem with the film. The portable X ray in the morgue was old and not known for its reliability.
Sara studied the film for another few seconds, then walked back to the scale. She separated the terminal ileum at the ileocecal valve and carried the large intestines to the foot of the table. After using the faucet to clean off the blood, she squeezed her fingers down from the base of the sigmoid colon, searching for the object that had made the noise. She found a hard lump about five inches into the rectum.
“Hand me the scalpel,” she ordered, holding out her hand. Jeffrey did as he was told, watching her work.
Sara made a small incision, releasing a foul odor into the room. Jeffrey stepped back, but Sara did not have that luxury. She used the pickups to remove an object that was approximately a half inch long. A rinse under the faucet revealed that it was a small key.
“A handcuff key?” Jeffrey asked, leaning over for a better look.
“Yes,” Sara answered, feeling a little light-headed. “It was forced up into the rectum from the anus.”
“Why?”
“I guess so that we would find it,” Sara answered. “Could you get an evidence bag?”
Jeffrey did as he was told, opening the bag so that she could drop the key in. “Do you think we’ll find anything on it?”
“Bacteria,” she answered. “If you mean fingerprints, I seriously doubt it.” She pressed her lips together, thinking this through. “Turn the lights off for a second.”
“What are you thinking?”
Sara walked toward the light box, using her elbow to turn it off. “I’m thinking he put the key up there relatively early in the game. I’m thinking the edge is sharp. Maybe it tore the condom.”
Jeffrey walked over to the light switch as Sara peeled off her gloves. She picked up the black light, which would highlight traces of seminal fluid.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, and the lights went out.
Sara blinked several times, letting her eyes adjust to the unnatural light. Slowly, she cast the black light along the incision she had made in the rectum. “Hold this,” she said, giving Jeffrey the light. She slipped on a fresh pair of gloves and with the scalpel opened the incision farther. A small pocket of purple showed in the opening.
Jeffrey gave a small sigh, as if he had been holding his breath. “Is it enough for a DNA comparison?”
Sara stared at the purplish glowing matter. “I think so.”
Sara tiptoed through her sister’s apartment, peeking around the bedroom door to make sure Tessa was still alone.
“Tessie?” she whispered, shaking her slightly.
“What?” Tessa grumbled, rolling over. “What time is it?”
Sara looked at the clock on the bedside table. “About two in the morning.”
“What?” Tessa repeated, rubbing her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Sara said, “Scoot over.”
Tessa did as she was told, holding up the sheet for Sara. “What’s wrong?”
Sara did not answer. She pulled the comforter up under her chin.
“Is something wrong?” Tessa repeated.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Is that girl really dead?”
Sara closed her eyes. “Yes.”
Tessa sat up in bed, turning on the light. “We’ve got to talk, Sara.”
Sara rolled over, her back to her sister. “I don’t want to talk.”
“I don’t care,” Tessa answered, pulling the covers away from Sara. “Sit up.”
“Don’t order me around,” Sara countered, feeling annoyed. She had come here to feel safe so that she could sleep, not to be pushed around by her kid sister.
“Sara,” Tessa began. “You have got to tell Jeffrey what happened.”
Sara sat up, angry that this was starting again. “No,” she answered, her lips a tight line.
“Sara,” Tessa said, her voice firm. “Hare told me about that girl. He told me about the tape on her mouth and about the way she was put on your car.”
“He shouldn’t talk about that kind of stuff with you.”
“He wasn’t telling it as a point of interest,” Tessa said. She got out of bed, obviously angry.
“What are you so pissed at me about?” Sara demanded, standing, too. They faced each other on opposite sides of the room, the bed between them.
Sara put her hands on her hips. “It’s not my fault, okay? I did everything I could do to help that girl, and if she couldn’t live with it, then that’s her choice.”
“Great choice, huh? I guess it’s better to put a bullet in your brain than to keep it in all the time.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“You know what it means,” Tessa snapped back. “You need to tell Jeffrey, Sara.”
“I won’t.”
Tessa seemed to size her up. She crossed her arms over her chest, threatening, “If you don’t, I will.”
“What?” Sara gasped. If Tessa had punched her, Sara would have felt less shock. Her mouth opened in surprise. “You wouldn’t.”
“Yes, I would,” Tessa answered, her mind obviously made up. “If I don’t, then Mom will.”
“You and Mom hatched this little plan together?” Sara gave a humorless laugh. “I suppose Dad’s in on it, too?” She threw her hands up into the air. “My whole family’s ganging up on me.”
“We’re not ganging up on you,” Tessa countered. “We’re trying to help you.”
“What happened to me,” Sara began, her words clipped and precise, “has nothing to do with what happened to Sibyl Adams and Julia Matthews.” She leaned across the bed, giving Tessa a look of warning. They could both play at this game.
“That’s not your decision to make,” Tessa countered.
Sara felt her anger boiling over at the threat. “You want me to tell you how they’re different, Tessie? You want to know the things I know about these cases?” She did not give her sister time to answer. “For one, nobody carved a cross on my chest and left me to bleed out in the toilet.” She paused, knowing the impact her words would have. If Tessa wanted to push Sara, Sara knew how to push back.
Sara continued, “For another, no one knocked out my front teeth so they could sodomize my face.”
Tessa’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh, God.”
“Nobody nailed my hands and feet to the floor so he could fuck me.”
“No,” Tessa breathed, tears coming to her eyes.
Sara could not stop herself, even though her words were obviously acid in Tessa’s ears. “Nobody scrubbed out my mouth with Clorox. Nobody shaved my pubic hair so there wouldn’t be any trace evidence.” She paused for breath. “Nobody stabbed a hole in my gut so he could—” Sara forced herself to stop, knowing she was going too far. Still, a small sob escaped from Tessa’s mouth as she made the connection. Her eyes had been on Sara’s the entire time, and the look of horror on her face sent waves of guilt through Sara.
Sara whispered, “I’m sorry, Tessie. I’m so sorry.”
Tessa’s hand slowly fell from her mouth. She said, “Jeffrey is a policeman.”
Sara put her hand to her chest. “I know that.”
“You’re so beautiful,” Tessa said. “And you’re smart and you’re funny and you’re tall.”
Sara laughed so that she wouldn’t cry.
“And this time twelve years ago, you were raped,” Tessa finished.
“I know that.”
“He sends you postcards every year, Sara. He knows where you live.”
“I know that.”
“Sara,” Tessa began, a begging quality to her voice. “You have to tell Jeffrey.”
“I can’t.”
Tessa stood firm. “You don’t have a choice.”