Читать книгу The Silent Wife - Karin Slaughter, Karin Slaughter - Страница 12

“Tessa,” Sara practically yelled into the phone. “Tessie, would you just—”

Her little sister wasn’t going to listen. She kept rambling, her voice taking on the cadence of the adults in Peanuts cartoons.

Wah-wah-wah-wah, wah-wah-wah-wah.

Sara tapped the phone on speaker and rested it on the shelf above the sink. She washed her face with the pink soap from the dispenser. The cheap paper towels disintegrated in her hands. If Sara did not get out of this prison soon, they were going to have to put her in a cell.

Tessa picked up on the noise. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m taking a whore’s bath in the visitor’s restroom at Phillips State Prison.” Sara peeled a piece of wet paper towel off her cheek. “I’ve been up to my eyeballs in blood, piss and shit for the last five hours.”

“It’s like college all over again.”

Sara laughed, but not so Tessa could hear. “Tessie, do what you want to do. If you want to train to be a midwife, train to be a midwife. You don’t need my approval.”

“Bull. Shit.”

Sara couldn’t say it again because, in truth, they always needed each other’s approval. Sara couldn’t sleep if Tessa was mad at her. Tessa couldn’t function if Sara was displeased. Fortunately, the older they got, the less it happened, but this time was different.

Tessa was spinning out of control. She was supposed to fly home a month ago, but she’d delayed the trip. She had texted her husband for a divorce. She had FaceTimed her five-year-old daughter to tell her that she would be home by Thanksgiving. She had apparently moved back into their parents’ garage apartment. One day, she wanted to go to graduate school. The next day, she wanted to be a midwife. What she really needed to do was find a good therapist who could help her understand that all of this change wasn’t going to change a damn thing.

As the old saying went, wherever you go, there you are.

“Sissy, you should know this,” Tessa said. “Georgia has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country. It’s even worse for black women. They’re six times more likely to die from giving birth than white women.”

Sara did not point out that she did know this, because as one of the state’s medical examiners, she was in charge of compiling all of the depressing statistics her sister was tossing back at her. “You’re making an argument for more doctors, not more midwives.”

“Don’t try to change the subject. It’s a proven fact that home births are just as safe as hospital births.”

“Tess.” Shut up, Sara. Just shut up. “The study you’re taking that from was done in the UK. Pregnant women in rural areas have to drive more than an hour for—”

“In South Africa—”

Wah-wah-wah-wah, wah-wah-wah-wah.

Sara could not bear to hear another heart-warming story about how being a missionary in South Africa had Made Tessa a Better Human Being. As if everyone was supposed to forget about the six years Tessa had spent partying her way to a four-year degree in modern English poetry, then the next five years she’d spent working in their father’s plumbing business while managing to fuck every good-looking man in the tri-county area.

Not that Sara was against fucking good-looking men—she had fucked one several times over the weekend—but there was an actual point to her intransigence that she could never, ever say out loud.

Sara did not think that midwives were an inherently bad idea. She thought Tessa, her sister, working as a midwife was a recipe for disaster. She loved her baby sister, but Tessa had once thrown her shoe through a window when the lace broke. She couldn’t solve a Rubik’s Cube if you put the math in front of her face. Tessa’s idea of a balanced diet was using a piece of celery to scoop out macaroni and cheese. This was the woman who was supposed to remain calm and composed, to keep her training at the forefront during a tense, potentially risky, delivery?

Tessa said, “If you’re not going to listen to me, I’m going to go.”

“I am lis—”

Tessa hung up.

Sara gripped the phone the way she wanted to grip her sister’s neck.

She checked the time. Charlie was probably wondering if she’d fallen down the toilet. She re-clipped her hair. She straightened her long-sleeved T-shirt. Will’s shirt, actually. The material gapped around her shoulders. The sleeves were too long. Sara ran her fingers along the material. She had changed into a fresh pair of scrub pants, but the stench of the cafeteria lingered like the worst perfume ever.

Charlie was patiently sitting at one of the visitor’s tables when she opened the door. He grabbed her duffle bag without being asked. The smile underneath his handlebar mustache was genuine. Charlie was a sweetheart, but he could’ve made things difficult for Sara when she’d first joined the team. He had nursed a crush on Will for years. Will had been clueless, just as he’d been when Sara was nursing a crush on him. The man couldn’t take a hint if it sat on his face.

Charlie asked, “Everything good?”

“Yes, thanks. I just needed a minute.”

He smiled the smile of a man who had heard everything through the thin wooden door.

“Sorry,” Sara apologized. Charlie’s job description didn’t usually include waiting outside women’s restrooms. He was being more vigilant than usual because they were working in a men’s prison. “Is Gary finished logging the evidence?”

“If he’s not, he will be soon.” Charlie held open the door. The sunlight instantly dried the water on Sara’s skin. They were outside the prison walls, walking through the parking lot, but the building still bore down ominously. She could hear screaming because there was always screaming when people were locked in cages.

“So.” Charlie slid on a pair of sunglasses. “Did you see the new guy in latent prints?”

“The one who looks like outdoorsy Rob Lowe?”

“He invited me for a drink. I almost packed a suitcase.” Charlie shook his head. “I’m such a Charlotte.”

“Charlotte always knew what she wanted.” Sara tried to maintain their casual tone. “Have you talked to Will lately?”

Charlie took off his sunglasses. “About what?”

The question had given away too much. And it was pointless anyway. Will was not one to volunteer his feelings. Normally, Sara found a way to pull him out of his shell, but she had hit her limit on shell-pulling. She loved Will with every fiber of her being. She wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of her life with him. She wasn’t expecting fireworks or a parade, but she wanted him to at least ask the damn question. I want your mother to be happy was a life goal, not a marriage proposal. The fact that forty-three days had passed without Will bringing it up again was maddening. Sara did not want a silent husband. She sure as hell was not going to be a silent wife.

“Sara?” Charlie asked. “What’s up?”

Fortunately, her phone started to buzz. She had a text from Will, an icon of a telephone receiver with a question mark. Most of their written communications were pictorial. Will was dyslexic. He could read, but not quickly. Sara knew that the rest of the world texted with emojis, but she liked to think that she and Will had developed their own special language.

She told Charlie, “I need to make a call.”

“I’ll help Gary finish up.” He walked ahead. “We should be ready to roll in five.”

“I’ll be there in two.” Sara was certain Will was calling to discuss what to order for dinner. He was terrified he would starve to death if he went more than an hour without food.

Besides, it wasn’t like Will had avoided talking about something else that was very important for the last forty-three days.

He answered on the first ring. Instead of a hello, he asked, “Can you talk?”

Something was wrong. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” He sounded unsure. “We have to talk. I don’t want you to be mad. I was wrong to let it go on for this long. I’m sorry.”

Sara put her hand to her eyes. Forty-three motherfucking days. He could not be calling to have that conversation right now. “Babe, I’m standing in a parking lot outside of a prison.”

He seemed taken aback, which was the point of her tone. “Sara, I—”

“Will.” She was already primed to be annoyed by Tessa, but this was enough to send her over the edge. “You’ve had six damn weeks to—”

“Daryl Nesbitt.”

The name was gibberish.

Until it wasn’t.

Sara’s brain flashed through a set of images like the disk on a Viewfinder. She was back in Grant County. Walking through the field. Feeling Jeffrey’s eyes on her. Kneeling in the woods. Waiting for the ambulance. Blood on her hands. Air whistling through the barrel of Jeffrey’s plastic pen. Lena running uselessly into the clearing with the defibrillator that they weren’t going to need.

Sara pressed her fingers into her eyelids. Tears squeezed out.

“Sara?”

“What about Nesbitt?”

“He’s here. He’s made some charges against Lena Adams.” Will stopped, as if he expected her to say something. “And, uh, he’s also said some things, some bad things, about …”

Sara’s lungs tightened as she pushed out the word. “Jeffrey.”

“Yeah.” He paused again. “Really bad things.”

Her hand went to her throat. Unbidden, she thought about the way Jeffrey used to stroke her neck when they were lying in bed. She banished the memory. “Nesbitt is saying that he was framed? That the department acted illegally?”

“Yes.”

Sara nodded, because this wasn’t a new charge. “He tried to sue Jeffrey’s estate in civil court.” In effect, he had tried to sue Sara. At the time, she was still struggling to come to terms with Jeffrey’s death. Sleeping too much, crying too much, taking too many sleeping pills and not caring whether or not she woke up. “The case was dismissed. What does he want now?”

“He’s offering to trade some information if we re-open the investigation.”

Sara could not stop nodding. It was her body’s way of trying to make sense of this, as if she could anticipate everything that was coming and had no problem accepting it. “What information?”

Will laid out the details, but everything he said turned nonsensical. Sara had nearly drowned in her own grief after losing Jeffrey. She had moved to Atlanta to get away from his ghost on every street corner. She had met Will. She had fallen in love with him. She was on the precipice of starting a new life and now—

“Sara?” Will said.

She tried to strip away her emotions and take this to its logical conclusion. It wasn’t easy. Her heart was punching like a fist against her ribcage. She said, “You’re going to have to talk to Lena about Nesbitt’s case.”

He hesitated before saying, “Yes.”

“And Lena will tell you Nesbitt is full of shit, because he’s always been full of shit. Or maybe he’s not, because Lena is a liar, and she’s a bad cop. But Nesbitt’s a pedophile and he’s in prison, so who are people going to believe?”

“Yes.” His tone was still off, but everything felt off. “There’s something else.”

“Of course there is.”

“Nesbitt claims there are other victims. The first one—”

“Rebecca Caterino.” The girl’s name was seared into her memory. “She went by Beckey.”

“Nesbitt says there were more victims after his arrest.” Will paused again. “He says that a serial killer is working all over the state.”

Sara still could not parse the information. Her hand covered her mouth. Every part of her body wanted to end this conversation. “Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know. Faith and Amanda told me not to tell you anything until we have more information, but I felt like you would want to know. Immediately. And this is the first chance I had to talk. I’m in the bathroom. Faith is waiting for me in the car.” He stopped, obviously expecting a response, but Sara was without words. “You wanted me to tell you about this, right?”

Sara couldn’t honestly say. “What else?”

“I got Amanda to agree to let you examine the latest victim. Alleged victim. We’re still not sure.” He stopped to swallow. “She wanted you to go in without any preconceptions, I guess. Like if you saw something, a detail or a signature, that reminded you of the Grant County case, but I—”

“Was Faith on board with lying to me, too?”

He didn’t answer.

Sara scanned the parking lot. She spotted Faith’s red Mini down by the employee entrance. Her friend was sitting in the passenger’s seat, head bent toward her lap. She was probably reading Daryl Nesbitt’s case file because she had already told Will to lie to Sara so that part of her job was done.

“Will?”

Sara could hear him breathing, but he still didn’t answer.

She bit her lip to keep it from trembling. She looked down at her hand.

Carpals. Metacarpals. Proximal, intermediate and distal phalanges.

There were twenty-seven bones in the hand. If she got through them all without Will speaking, she was going to hang up and leave.

He cleared his throat.

Scaphoid. Lunate. Triquetral. Pisiform. Trapezium. Trapezoid.

“Sara?” he finally said. “Did I do the wrong thing?”

“No.”

She ended the call. She slipped the phone back into her pocket. She continued across the parking lot. Sara felt blurred, like she was two inches outside of her body. One part of her was in the present, living her life with Will. The other part was being pulled back into Grant County. Jeffrey. Frank. Lena. The woods. The victim. The grim circumstances of the case.

Sara struggled against the competing images. She searched for solid, verifiable things.

Gary and Charlie were standing at the back of the crime scene van.

Faith was still in her Mini.

Amanda was in her white Audi A8. Her phone was to her ear. Her salt-and-pepper helmet of hair had tilted forward like a bell as she leaned against the headrest. She saw Sara and motioned her over.

The passenger-side window slid down. Amanda said, “You’re with me. There’s an interesting case in Sautee.”

She wanted you to go in without any preconceptions.

Sara lifted the door handle. She was on autopilot. Her brain was too overloaded to process anything but muscle commands. She opened the door. She started to get in.

“Sara?” Will was jogging toward the car. He looked exactly how she felt—blindsided. He was out of breath when he reached her. His eyes took in Amanda, Charlie, Gary, Faith. They all probably knew about Nesbitt and they had all somehow agreed to keep Sara in the dark.

She told Will, “I want a salad for dinner.”

He hesitated before nodding.

She pressed her hand to his chest. His heart thumped wildly beneath her palm. “I’ll call you when I’m on the way home.”

She kissed him on the mouth the same way she normally would. She sat in Amanda’s car. Will closed the door. Sara put on her seatbelt. Will waved. Sara waved back.

Amanda pulled out of the parking space. She took a left onto the main road. She didn’t speak until they were turning onto the interstate. “Sautee Nacoochee is in White County, approximately fifty miles from here. A twenty-nine-year-old female named Alexandra McAllister was found in the Unicoi State Park at approximately six yesterday morning. She was reported missing by her mother eight days ago. There was a large-scale search that yielded nada. Two hikers were out with their dog. The dog found the body in a heavily wooded area between two trails. The county coroner has officially ruled it as an accidental death. My gut tells me otherwise.”

There’s something else.

“I’ve called in some favors to get us a look-see at the body,” Amanda said. “We’ve got our big toe in, but they can pull us back at any time, so let’s tread softly.”

More victims. Other women. Serial killer.

Sara had seen Daryl Nesbitt in person only once. He was sitting beside his lawyer in the courtroom. Sara was standing with Buddy Conford, the man she had hired to represent her in the civil case against Jeffrey’s estate. She was swaying so badly that Buddy had to hold her up. The loss of Jeffrey had stopped her world from spinning. Sara had always thought of herself as strong. She was smart, driven, capable of pushing herself to the extreme. Jeffrey’s murder had changed her at a molecular level. The woman who’d never let anyone outside of family see her cry couldn’t make it through one aisle of the grocery store without breaking down. She had become vulnerable in a way that she’d never thought was possible.

She had become vulnerable in a way that made it possible for her to be with Will.

Did I do the wrong thing?

Sara let her head fall into her hand. What had she done to Will? She had been stunned into silence, then angered by his non-response, then told him she wanted a salad for dinner. He must be panicking right now. Sara reached into her pocket for her phone. She pulled up the keyboard to text him, but what could she say? There wasn’t an emoji to express what she wanted to do, which was go home, crawl into bed and sleep until all of this was over.

Amanda asked, “Everything okay?”

Sara dialed Will’s number. She listened to the rings.

This time, he answered, “Hello?”

She could hear the rush of road noise. Faith had been in the passenger’s seat of the Mini, which meant that Will was driving, which meant that the call was on speaker.

Sara tried to sound casual. “Hey, babe. I changed my mind about the salad.”

He cleared his throat. She could picture him rubbing his jaw with his fingers, one of his few nervous habits. “Okay.”

Sara could tell that Amanda was hanging on her every word. Faith was probably doing the same with Will, because this was what happened when people kept secrets.

She told Will, “I’ll pick up McDonald’s.”

Will cleared his throat. Sara never offered to pick up McDonald’s because it wasn’t really food. “Okay.”

She said, “I’m—”

Freaked out. Worried. Angry. Hurt. Torn because of Jeffrey but still so deeply, irrevocably in love with you and I’m sorry I don’t know what else to say.

She tried again. “I’ll let you know when I’m on the way.”

He paused a beat. “Okay.”

Sara ended the call. Three okays and she’d probably made things worse. This was exactly why she hated lying or hiding things or whatever bullshit excuse Amanda had given for holding back this information from Sara like she was a child who couldn’t handle the truth about the Easter Bunny.

Nesbitt. Jeffrey. Lena Fucking Adams.

It was Faith’s silence that hurt the most. Sara would just as soon be mad at Amanda for obfuscating as she would be at a snake for hissing. Will had come clean because even an amoeba could be taught to avoid negative stimuli. Faith was her friend. They never talked about Will, but they talked about other things. Serious things, like Faith’s misery as a pregnant fifteen-year-old. Like Sara’s heartbreak when Jeffrey had died. They swapped recipes neither of them would ever try. They gossiped about work. Faith complained about her sex life. Sara babysat Faith’s kid.

Amanda said, “Would you mind rolling down the window? There’s a smell, like—”

“A bloody toilet?” Sara cracked the window just enough to give herself some fresh air. She stared at the blur of trees as they coasted up the highway. Looking at the forest brought her back to that day in the woods. The Viewfinder in her head retrieved the image—Sara on her knees. Jeffrey across from her.

Sara had longed to be held by him, which had felt devastating all over again. The only person she had wanted comfort from was the only person who could not give it. She had ended up calling her sister to meet her at work just to sit with Sara for a few minutes while she’d cried.

Amanda said. “You’re awfully quiet over there.”

“Am I?” The words felt thick in Sara’s mouth.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

Amanda couldn’t afford her thoughts. Sara said, “Those ridges on the side of the road. The ones that make a thumping sound when the tires go over them. What are they called?”

“Rumble strips.”

Sara held her breath before letting it go. “They always remind me of running my fingers down Will’s stomach. His abdominal muscles are so—”

“How about some music?” Amanda’s radio was permanently tuned to the Frank Sinatra station. The speakers purred with a familiar samba—

The girl from Ipanema goes walking …

Sara closed her eyes. Her breathing was too shallow. She felt lightheaded. She forced her respiration to calm. She unclenched her hands in her lap. She let her thoughts fall back into Grant County.

Rebecca Caterino had been found exactly one year and a day after Sara had filed divorce papers at the courthouse. To commemorate the anniversary, Sara had driven into Atlanta to meet a man. He wasn’t a particularly memorable man, but she had told herself that she was going to have fun if it killed her. Then she had drunk too much wine. Then she’d drunk too much whiskey. Then she’d ended up with her head in a toilet.

The next thing she remembered was waking up in her childhood bedroom with a jaw-dropping hangover. Her car was parked in the driveway. Tessa and her father had driven into Atlanta to get her. Sara was not the type of person who ever drank too much. Tessa had teased her over the breakfast table. Eddie had asked her if she’d enjoyed her trip to Barf-A-Lona. Cathy had told her to go help Brock. The only clean clothes Sara could find in her old chest of drawers was a tennis outfit straight out of Sweet Valley High.

“Do you know this one?” Amanda turned up the volume. Sinatra had moved on to “My Kind of Town.” She told Sara, “My father used to sing this to me.”

Sara wasn’t going to traipse down memory lane with Amanda. She had her own memories to wrestle with.

Jeffrey had been a Frank Sinatra kind of man. Respected. Capable. Admired. People naturally wanted to be around him, to follow his lead. Jeffrey had taken it all in stride. He’d gone to Auburn on a football scholarship. He’d graduated with a degree in American History. He’d chosen to be a cop because his mentor was a cop. He’d moved to Grant County because he understood small towns.

Sara could clearly remember the first time she’d seen him. She was volunteering as the team doctor at a high school football game. Jeffrey, the new chief, was glad-handing the crowd. He was a breathtakingly gorgeous man. In her entire life, Sara had never felt such a naked, visceral attraction. She had stared at Jeffrey long enough to do the calculations. Tessa was going to be sleeping with him before the weekend was over.

But Jeffrey had chosen Sara.

From the beginning, she had been all the wrong things with him. Flattered. Completely out of her element. Easy, because she’d slept with him on the first date. Damaged, because Jeffrey was the first man Sara had been with after being brutally raped in Atlanta.

She had told Jeffrey that she’d moved back to Grant County because she wanted to serve a rural community. That was a lie. From the age of thirteen, Sara had been determined to become the top pediatric surgeon in Atlanta. Every spare moment from that point onward had been spent with her head in a textbook or her butt in a desk chair.

Ten minutes in the staff restroom of Grady Hospital had completely derailed her life.

Sara had been handcuffed. She had been silenced. She had been raped. She had been stabbed. She had developed an ectopic pregnancy that robbed her of the ability to have children. Then there was the trial. Then there was the excruciating wait for the verdict, the even more excruciating wait for the sentencing, the move back to Grant County, the establishment of a new career, a new life, a new kind of normal.

Then there was this beautiful, intelligent man who knocked her off her feet.

At first, Sara hadn’t told Jeffrey about the rape because she was waiting for the right moment. Then she’d realized there wasn’t going to be a right moment. The one thing that Jeffrey was most attracted to, the thing that Sara had over most everyone else, was her strength. She couldn’t let him know that she’d been broken. That she had given up her dreams. That she had been a victim.

Sara had kept the secret throughout their first marriage. She had been relieved she’d held it back during their divorce. She had kept it hidden when they’d started dating again, falling in love again. She had kept the secret for so long that by the time she’d finally told Jeffrey, Sara had felt ashamed, as if it was all somehow her fault.

The song on the radio pulled her back into the present. Amanda’s ring clicked against the steering wheel as she tapped along to Sinatra’s ode to Chicago—

One town that won’t let you down.

Sara looked for a tissue. Her sleeve—Will’s sleeve—was empty. Charlie had taken her duffle bag. She’d left her purse in the van. She should call Charlie and ask him to lock it in her office, but the thought of taking her phone out of her pocket, dialing the number, was too much.

She wanted Will. To spoon with him on the couch. To sit in his lap and feel his arms around her. He was probably halfway to Macon right now. They were literally going in opposite directions.

Sara could remember exactly when she had told Will about the rape. She’d only known him for a few months. He was still married. She was still unsure. They were standing in her parents’ front yard. It was freezing cold. Her greyhounds were shivering. Sara was longing for Will to kiss her, but of course he wasn’t going to actually kiss her until she kissed him. The confession had come naturally. Or as naturally as it ever could. She had told Will that she had put off telling her husband about the rape because she didn’t want Jeffrey to think that she was weak.

Will had told Sara that he’d never once thought of her as anything but strong.

He was kind that way. He was physically impressive. He was razor-sharp. But Will was not the type of man who commanded attention. He was the man at the party who stood in the corner petting the neighbor’s dog. His humor was mostly self-deprecating. He worried about how people felt. He was silent, but always watchful. Sara assumed this came from his horrific childhood. Will had grown up in the foster care system. He seldom talked about that time, but she knew that he had suffered a shocking level of abuse. His skin told her the story—cigarette burns, electrical burns, jagged ridges where bone had fractured through skin. He was shy about the scars, unreasonably embarrassed that he’d been the sort of child that someone would hate.

That wasn’t the Will that the rest of the world knew. His protracted silences made most people uncomfortable. He had a feralness to him. An undercurrent of violence. An internal spring that threatened to flick open like the blade of a knife. In another life, he might have been one of the thugs locked up at Phillips. Will had barely graduated high school. He’d been homeless at eighteen. There were criminal charges in his background that Amanda had somehow managed to expunge. This clean slate had given Will the opportunity to change his life. Most men would not have taken it. Will was not most men. He’d gone to college. He’d become a special agent. He was a damn good cop. He cared about people. He wanted to get it right.

Sara was loath to compare the two great loves of her life, but there was one very stark difference between them: With Jeffrey, Sara had known that there were dozens, possibly hundreds of other women who could love him just as intensely as she did.

With Will, Sara was keenly aware that she was the only woman on earth who could love him the way that he deserved to be loved.

Amanda said, “We’ve got another half hour. Is there something you’d rather listen to?”

Sara dialed the tuner to Pop2K and cranked up the volume. She rolled down the window the rest of the way. The sharp breeze cut into her skin. She closed her eyes to keep them from burning.

Amanda endured ten seconds of the Red Hot Chili Peppers before she broke.

The radio snapped off. Sara’s window snicked up.

Amanda said, “Will told you about Nesbitt.”

Sara smiled, because it had taken her long enough. “I thought you were a detective.”

“I thought so, too.” Amanda’s tone showed a begrudging respect. “How much do you know?”

“Everything Will knows.”

The words clearly stung. Amanda wasn’t used to Will choosing a different side. Still, she told Sara, “Nesbitt’s jacket is in my briefcase behind the seat.”

Sara stretched around to retrieve the file. She opened it on her lap. The jacket was at least two inches thick. She skipped over the expected—that the raging asshole had managed to buy himself twenty more years—and found the medical section. They didn’t need a warrant to read the details. As an inmate, Nesbitt didn’t have a right to privacy. Sara skimmed the voluminous notes on his past hospitalizations and multiple visits to the prison infirmary.

Nesbitt was a below-the-knee amputee, abbreviated as BKA. During his eight-year incarceration, he’d seen dozens, possibly hundreds, of different doctors. There was no continuity of care in prison. You were more likely to see a unicorn than a wound-care specialist. Inmates got what they were given, and if they were very lucky, the doctor wasn’t fleeing malpractice suits or employed by a private contractor whose bottom line depended on providing the absolute bare minimum of care.

Sara flipped ahead to the pages and pages of invoices. Prisoners were charged a $5 a visit co-pay no matter if they were seeing the doctor for congestive heart failure or getting their toenails clipped. Nesbitt owed the state of Georgia $2,655. His commissary account and three-cents-an-hour janitorial wage were being garnished until the debt was resolved. If he ever got out of prison, that money would continue to be garnished from whatever paycheck he managed to earn. In the last eight years alone, Nesbitt had required 531 medical visits and 28 hospitalizations. That was more than one visit per week.

Sara told Amanda, “Nesbitt’s foot was amputated after a car accident. He’s lost four inches of leg since he became incarcerated. He was poorly fitted for a prosthetic. A bad prosthetic is like a shoe that doesn’t fit. The rubbing and friction occludes normal capillary pressure. The tissue becomes ischemic. If this goes on long enough, which it’s bound to in prison, the tissue becomes necrotic.”

“And then?”

“Then—” Sara paged through the chart, which was a case study in Third World medicine. “Diagnostically, you stage the damage based on what you can see. Stage I is superficial, just a red patch. Stage II involves the top two layers of skin. It looks like a blister, basically. Stage III is an ulcer with full thickness. That’s an open sore. You can see the fat, but the bone and muscle aren’t visible. There’s a white or yellow slough that has to be wiped away.”

“Pus?”

“More like a slimy film. It smells awful. You have to keep it clean or you’ll develop an anaerobic bacterial undergrowth.” Sara noted in the chart that bacteria had repeatedly set up in Nesbitt’s leg. Inmates were not allowed to keep medications inside their cells, and sterile cloths were hard to come by, especially at $5 each visit.

Sara continued, “Stage IV is a full-thickness ulcer. You can actually see inside the leg to bone, muscle and tendon. Past that, it’s technically unstageable because you can’t see anything. The skin develops a black, hard scar tissue that’s as thick as the sole of a shoe. You have to saw through it. The smell is putrid. Think of rotting meat, because that’s basically what’s happening. The muscle is destroyed. The bone becomes infected. Nesbitt has reached this point four times over the last eight years, and each time, they cut off a little bit more of his leg.”

“Is that the best way to treat it?”

Sara would’ve laughed if the situation wasn’t so appalling. “If you’re on a Civil War battlefield, absolutely. But this is the twenty-first century. The gold standard is to use a vacuum-assisted closure and ideally, hyperbolic oxygen treatments to bring blood flow back to the area. In the best of circumstances, it would take months of intensive wound care to heal.”

“The state would never pay for that.”

Sara allowed the laugh to come out. The state barely paid for clean sheets. “Nesbitt currently has a stage III, full-thickness ulcer. You’d be able to smell the rot if you stood close enough. He’s one, maybe two more infections away from losing his knee joint. That opens up a whole new set of problems. Even good candidates have trouble adapting to an AKA prosthesis.”

“He’ll keep losing sections of leg until there’s nothing left?”

“It won’t come to that. They’ll put him in a wheelchair. He won’t have access to physical therapy. His exercise will be limited. It’s almost impossible to stay well-hydrated drinking toilet water. He’s already carrying an extra twenty pounds. His blood pressure, cholesterol and A1c are elevated. Diabetes is right around the corner.”

“Another level of hell?”

“Rock bottom,” Sara said. “He can monitor his blood sugar in his cell, but he’ll have to go to the infirmary each time he needs an injection. You can imagine how well that system works. Hundreds of inmates die every year from diabetic ketoacidosis. Nesbitt is standing at the precipice of a cascade that is going to cut decades off of his life. Not to mention the trauma of what he’s already experienced.”

“You seem to have a lot of compassion for a pedophile who tried to sue your husband’s estate.”

Sara realized that Amanda had done some investigating on her own. The civil suit wasn’t mentioned in Nesbitt’s jacket. “I’m giving you a medical opinion, not a personal one.”

Still, Sara could hear her mother’s niggling voice: Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do unto me.

“It’s strange,” Amanda said. “Nesbitt never hinted at using his medical needs as a bargaining chip. We could transfer him to a hospital right now to treat his wound.”

“That’s a spit in the ocean. To really take care of him, you’re looking at north of a million dollars.” Sara laid it out for her. “A wound-care specialist. An orthopedist who specializes in limb salvage and amputation. A cardiologist. A vascular surgeon. A properly fitted prosthesis. Physical therapy. Quarterly adjustments. Complete replacement every three to four years. Nutritional support. Pain management.”

“I get it,” Amanda said. “Nesbitt must get it, too. That’s why he’s so focused on revenge. He’s determined to tarnish the Grant County force.”

“You mean Jeffrey.”

“I mean Lena Adams. He wants to see her behind bars.”

“Well what do you know. I’ve found common ground with a pedophile.” Sara paged back to Nesbitt’s most recent infirmary visit. “Absent a miracle, he’ll be in sepsis within the next two weeks. When the symptoms get bad enough, they’ll hospitalize him. Then he’ll be transferred back to prison. Then he’ll get sicker. Then they’ll hospitalize him. He’s been here four times. He knows what’s coming.”

“That explains his one-week deadline.” Amanda asked, “Can you recall anything about the Grant County investigation?”

“I can only give you a medical examiner’s perspective.” Sara tried to be diplomatic. During that time, most of her conversations with Jeffrey had quickly devolved into cheap shots and name-calling. “I was working as an advisor to the local coroner. Jeffrey and I weren’t on good terms.”

Amanda took a sharp turn onto a side street. Sara had lost track of time. They had already reached the Ingle Funeral Home of Sautee. Amanda looped around the building, then parked at the front entrance. She took out her phone to let their contact know that they’d arrived.

There was only one other car by the entrance, a red Chevy Tahoe. Sara looked up at the two-story brick building. Crisp white trim. Copper gutters. Alexandra McAllister was inside. She was twenty-nine years old. She had been missing for eight days. Her body had been found by two hikers who were out walking their dog.

Instead of silently wallowing in the past, Sara should’ve been drilling Amanda for details on the present.

“Two minutes.” Amanda was off the phone. “The family is about to leave.”

Sara asked the question she should’ve asked half an hour ago. “Do you think Nesbitt is right? Is there a serial killer?”

“Everyone wants to work a serial killer case,” Amanda said. “My job is to bring focus to the team so they stop swatting at flies and figure out where the rotting meat is.”

The front door opened. Silence descended inside the car as they watched a man and woman leave the building. They were both in their late fifties. Both bent over with grief. Alexandra McAllister’s parents, Sara assumed. They were dressed in black. They would’ve been asked to select a coffin. Gently prodded into choosing a pillow and colored satin lining. Told to bring in the last outfit their daughter would ever wear. Gently instructed to include underwear, shoes, jewelry. Made to sign paperwork and write checks and hand over photographs and set a date and time for visitation and the service and the burial—all of the things a parent never wanted to do for their child.

Or that a wife never wanted to do for her husband.

Amanda waited until the McAllisters were driving away to ask, “What happened to Jeffrey’s case files?”

Unbidden, Sara recalled the artful slope of Jeffrey’s handwriting. Part of her had fallen in love with him over his precise cursive. “Everything is in storage.”

“I need those files. Especially his notebooks.” Amanda got out of the car.

Instead of going through the front entrance, Amanda led Sara around the side of the building. Sara thought through the logistics of getting Jeffrey’s files to Atlanta. He had been a meticulous record keeper, so there would be no problem locating the correct boxes. She could ask Tessa to drive them up. But then Tessa would want to argue. Sara knew there was going to be some tension with Will. She couldn’t let the day go by without talking to Faith. Suddenly her To-Dos were sounding like a shit list.

The side door wasn’t locked. There was no security outside the building, not even a camera. Amanda simply opened the door and they both walked inside. She had clearly been given directions. She took a right up a long hallway, then started down the stairs to the basement.

The temperature turned chilly. The odor was antiseptic. Sara saw a desk under the stairs and file cabinets along the back wall. An accordion gate blocked off the open shaft of the freight elevator. The walk-in cooler gave off a low hum. The floor was tiled in gray laminate with a large drain in the center. The faucet on the stainless-steel industrial sink had a slow leak.

Sara had spent more than her fair share of time inside of funeral homes. While she wasn’t a fan of Georgia’s You Can Be a Coroner! gameshow of an election process, she was always grateful when the local guy—and it was usually a guy—was a funeral director. Licensed morticians had a textbook understanding of anatomy. They were also more likely to absorb the nuances of the forty-hour introductory course the state mandated for all incoming coroners.

Amanda looked at her watch. “Let’s not dilly-dally here.”

Sara hadn’t planned on it, but she wasn’t going to be rushed. “I can only do a preliminary, visual exam here. If she requires a full autopsy, I’ll have to take her back to headquarters.”

“Understood,” Amanda said. “Remember, the official cause of death at the moment has been ruled accidental. We can’t take her anywhere unless the coroner revises his finding.”

Sara doubted that. Amanda had a way of changing minds. “Yes, ma’am.”

There was a loud whir as the freight elevator lowered to the basement. Sara could see a pair of black wingtips. Black dress pants. Matching jacket. Vest buttoned a few inches below the neck. A black tie and a white shirt completed the look.

The elevator stopped. The gate folded back. The man who got off looked exactly how Sara expected. His gray hair was combed back, his mustache neatly trimmed. He was probably in his late seventies. He had an old-fashioned look about him and a somber air that fit his occupation.

“Good day, ladies.” He pulled a gurney off of the elevator and rolled it into the middle of the basement. A white sheet covered the body. The material was thick cotton with a monogrammed logo for the Dunedin Life Services Group, a multinational conglomerate that owned half of the funeral homes in the state.

The man said, “Deputy Director, welcome. Dr. Linton, I’m Ezra Ingle. Please accept my apologies for making you wait. I advised against it, but the parents insisted on seeing their loved one.” His soft Appalachian accent told Sara that he was a hometown boy. When he shook her hand, it was with practiced reassurance.

She said, “Thank you, Mr. Ingle. I appreciate your allowing me to look over your shoulder.”

He shot Amanda a wary glance, but told Sara, “I welcome a second opinion. However, I must admit I was surprised by the request.”

Amanda said nothing, though they obviously knew each other. Which was great for Sara. This was exactly the right moment for more tension.

“The parents confirmed the girl was an experienced hiker. They told me that it wasn’t unusual for her to spend the entire day alone inside the park.” He walked toward the desk and retrieved the paperwork. “I think you’ll find that I’m very thorough.”

“Thank you. I’m certain you are.” Sara couldn’t blame the man for feeling like his toes were being stepped on. All she could do was make this as painless as possible.

Ingle’s notes had been typed on an actual typewriter. She could still smell the fresh Wite-Out where he’d corrected a single typo.

The body was located fifty yards from Smith Creek in Unicoi State Park, which was in the northeastern part of the state. The park was over one thousand acres. Smith Creek was a six-and-a-half-mile tributary of the Chattahoochee River. The body was oriented east-to-west, approximately sixty yards from the 7.5 mile Mountain Bike Trail, a compacted soil surface trail rated as moderate to strenuous. The figure-eight circuit looped between the Unicoi and Helen side of Smith Creek and was marked with a white blaze.

Sara turned the page.

The creek was fifty yards down a 25-degree incline from the body. The victim was fully dressed in professional-level hiking attire. The moderate level of decomposition was conducive with an ambient temperature between 58–70 degrees over the prior week. The woman’s Subaru Outback had previously been located at the park entrance off of Georgia State Route 75, approximately 4.2 miles away from where the body was later found. Her phone and purse were locked inside the vehicle. The Subaru key fob was zipped inside the interior breast pocket of her rain jacket. A stainless-steel water bottle, partially filled, had been found two yards down from her body.

Sara said, “Mr. Ingle, I wish my teachers had been as thorough as you. Your preliminary report is incredibly detailed.”

“Preliminary,” Ingle repeated.

Sara glanced at Amanda for help. All she could see was the top of her head. She was typing on her phone, or being extremely rude, as it was known in local parlance. Sara’s own phone had buzzed in her pocket but nothing was more important than what was right in front of her.

“If I may.” Ingle laid around two dozen 4x6 color photographs on the wooden desk.

He’d been concise in his documentation. The body in situ from four different angles. The exposed torso showing predator activity. The hands. The neck. The eyes with and without the sunglasses she had been wearing. Nothing was in extreme close-up except the inside of the mouth. The image was slightly out of focus, but there were no visible blockages in her throat.

Ingle said, “This next series of pictures tells the most likely story. The Mountain Bike Trail was crowded that day, so my assumption is she was cutting through the forest to find the lesser-trafficked Smith Creek Trail. It’s pretty tough going through there. Overgrown with brambles and such. She fell at some point. Hit her head on a rock, I’m guessing. There’s quite a few in the area. She was incapacitated by the head injury. The rain came, and hard. You’ll see my weather report on the back page. It came down in buckets that night. Poor thing did what she could to protect herself, but she eventually succumbed.”

Sara studied the second series of inkjet-printed photos. As with the first, the blacks and browns were muted. The light wasn’t very good. Alexandra McAllister was twisted at the waist, her bent knees pointing deeper into the forest, her torso facing the direction of the stream. Sara’s attention was drawn to the close-up of the torso. The animal activity was significant, but unusual. Unless there was an open wound, carnivores typically went for body orifices—the mouth, nose, eyes, vagina and anus. The photos showed most of the damage was isolated to the stomach and chest area.

Ingle seemed to anticipate her question. “As you can see, she was wearing a very good rain jacket. Arc’teryx brand, Gore-Tex, completely waterproof, cinched at the sleeves and around the hood. Problem was, the zipper up the front was busted, so it wouldn’t stay closed. The pants were Patagonia, some kind of waterproof mountain climbing material, cinched at the ankles, tucked into the tops of her hiking boots.”

Sara understood why he was calling out these details. In Ingle’s scenario, the cinched hood had protected the face. The sunglasses had protected the eyes. The seals on the sleeves and pants had acted as a barrier against insects and animals. That left one area exposed for the predators. The broken zipper had let the jacket flap open. Her undershirt was more like a tank-top, sleeveless with a deep V at the neck. From the looks of it, more than one creature had fought over the body. That could explain why she had been pulled in different directions.

“We get a lot of gray foxes up here,” Ingle said. “Had a rabid one bite a woman a couple of years back.”

“I remember.” Sara pulled a pair of exam gloves from the box on the desk. She told Ingle, “So far, everything you’re telling me, everything I’ve read, points to an unfortunate accident.”

“I’m glad to hear you agree with me.” He added, “So far.”

Sara watched him remove the thick, white sheet covering the body. There was another sheet wrapped mummy-like from the shoulders down. This was clearly meant to keep her parents from seeing more than they probably should. Ingle used a pair of scissors to cut open the thin material. He was gentle in his movements, moving slowly from chest to foot.

The man had obviously taken great care with Alexandra McAllister before letting the parents see their child. Her nude body smelled of disinfectant. Her face was bloated, but not to the point of disfigurement. Her hair had been combed. Ingle must have massaged the livor mortis out of her face as he’d set her features to look as relaxed and natural as possible. He’d judiciously applied make-up to erase the horror of the woman’s last few hours. These acts of decency reminded Sara of Dan Brock back in Grant County. Especially after the death of his own father, Brock had shown an almost saintly kindness toward mourners.

Sara had experienced it first-hand when Jeffrey had died.

Ingle folded away the thin sheet. There was still another layer. He had covered the torso in plastic to keep the fluids from bleeding through. The effect was like cling film covering a full pot of spaghetti.

“Doctor?” Ingle was postponing removing the plastic until the last minute. Even with the precautions he’d taken, the smell would be potent.

“Thank you.” Sara started her visual exam at the head. She was able to appreciate the open fracture at the back of the skull. Dizziness. Nausea. Blurred vision. Stupor. Loss of consciousness. There was no way to tell what state the victim had been in post-injury. Every brain reacted differently to trauma. The one common denominator was that skulls were closed containers. Once the brain started to swell, there was nowhere for it to go. It was like blowing up a balloon inside a glass ball.

She pressed open the woman’s eyes. The contact lenses had fused to the corneas. There were signs of petechiae, the red, scattershot bursting of blood vessels in the eyes. This could be the result of strangulation, but it could also indicate that the brain had swelled into the brain stem, depressing respiration to the point of death. An autopsy might show a broken hyoid, indicating manual compression, but this wasn’t an autopsy.

At this point, Sara did not see a reason to suggest one.

She palpated the neck with her fingers. The structure felt stiff. There were multiple explanations for that finding, from whiplash sustained during the fall to swollen lymph glands.

She asked Ingle, “Do you have a flashlight?”

He took a penlight out of his pocket.

Sara pushed open the woman’s mouth. Nothing appeared any different from the photo. She pressed down the tongue and used the light to look inside. Nothing. She stuck her index finger down the throat as far as it would reach.

Ingle asked, “Do you feel an obstruction?”

“I don’t feel one, no.” The only definitive way to tell would be to dissect the tracheal block. Again, there was no reason to do so. Sara was not going to put this family through one more second of grief based on the theories of a pedophile with an ax to grind.

She told Ingle, “Ready.”

He slowly peeled back the plastic covering the torso.

The sucking sound lurched against the low ceiling. The abdomen looked as if a grenade had gone off inside. The smell was so noxious that Sara coughed. Her eyes watered. She looked back at Amanda. The top of her head still showed, but she was typing with one hand. She’d put the other hand under her nose to block the smell.

Sara did not have that luxury. She took a few deep breaths, forcing her body to accept that this was how it was going to be. Ingle seemed unfazed. The corners of his lips turned up in a well-earned smile.

Sara returned to the body.

The line of demarcation between where the waterproof materials had protected sections of the body and where the thin, cotton shirt had covered the torso could have been made with a ruler. Everything above the clavicles and below the hips was pristine. The belly and chest were a different matter.

The intestines had been gutted. The breasts had been ripped away. Most of the organs were missing. The ribs had been licked clean. Sara could see teeth marks where bone had been gnawed. She pulled the left arm away from the body to follow the trail of carnage from the shredded breast around to the side. The armpit had been eviscerated. The nerves, arteries and veins stuck out like strands of broken electrical cords. She opened the right arm and found the same type of destruction.

She asked Ingle, “What do you make of the axilla?”

“You mean the armpits?” he asked. “Foxes can be extremely vicious, especially when they fight. They’ve got claws as sharp as razors. They would’ve been frenzied.”

Sara nodded, though she didn’t quite agree with his assessment.

“Here.” Ingle went back to the desk. He found a magnifying glass in the top drawer. “You’ll see bits of blue material from the cotton shirt. I didn’t have time to pick it all out.”

“Thank you.” Sara took the magnifying glass. She knelt down beside the gurney. The teeth and claw marks were clearly visible. She had no doubt that several small animals had fed on the body. What she wanted to examine was the damage to the armpits.

Predators were drawn to the blood in organ meat and muscle. There wasn’t a lot of reward in the axilla. The nerves, veins and arteries of the brachial plexus extend from the spinal cord, through the neck, over the first rib and into the armpit. There were more complicated ways to describe the structures, but basically, the brachial plexus controlled the muscles of the arms. The various strands were distinguishable by their color. Veins and arteries were red. Nerves were pearly white to yellow.

Under the magnifying glass, Sara could see that the veins and arteries had been ripped open by teeth drawn to the blood.

By contrast, the nerves looked as if they had been cleanly sliced by a blade.

“Sara?” Amanda was finally looking up from her phone.

Sara shook her head, asking Ingle, “What about the scrape on her back?”

“The wound?”

“You called it a scrape in your notes.”

“Wound. Cut,” he said. “I guess she scratched the back of her neck on something? Perhaps a rock? The clothes weren’t torn, but I’ve seen it happen. Basic friction.”

He was using wound, cut and scratch interchangeably, which was like saying a dog was a chicken was an apple. Sara asked, “Can we turn her onto her side?”

Ingle replaced the plastic over the abdomen before rolling the shoulders. Sara rotated the hips and legs. She used the narrow beam of the penlight to examine the woman’s back. Livor mortis blackened the area like a bruise slashing down the spine. The skin had stretched and cracked from decomposition.

Sara counted the cervical vertebrae down from the base of the skull. She remembered a mnemonic from medical school—

C 3, 4, 5, keeps the diaphragm alive.

The phrenic nerve, which controls the rise and fall of the diaphragm, branches off from spinal nerves at the third, fourth and fifth cervical vertebra. When assessing spinal cord injuries, if those nerves are left intact, then the patient did not need a ventilator. Any damage below C5 would paralyze the legs. Damage above C5 would paralyze the legs and the arms, but it would also cut off the ability of the patient to breathe on her own.

Sara found the injury from Ingle’s notes directly below C5.

The scrape, because the skin had been scraped, was roughly the size of a thumbnail, deeper at one end, trailing off like a comet at the other. She understood why Ingle had dismissed the mark. It looked like the sort of accidental injury that happened all of the time. You rubbed your neck against something sharp. You scratched an itch a little too deeply. There would be pain, but not much. Later on, you would ask your husband or wife to look at it because you had no idea why your neck was hurting.

But there was more to this particular injury than an itch. The scrape was clearly meant to obscure a wound. And not just a wound, but a puncture. The circumference of the hole was roughly a quarter the size of a drinking straw. Sara immediately thought of the awl in a Swiss army knife. The round, pointed tool was ideal for punching holes in leather. Her father used a similar device called a counterpunch to sink the heads of nails in fine carpentry work.

When Sara pressed against the puncture, a watery, dark brown liquid wept out.

Ingle asked, “Is that fat?”

“Fat would be more rubbery and white. This is cerebrospinal fluid,” Sara said. “If I’m right, the killer used a metal tool to rupture her spinal cord. He sliced the nerves of the brachial plexus to immobilize the arms.”

“Hold on a minute.” The practiced calm had left Ingle’s tone. “Why would anybody wanna paralyze this poor little girl?”

Sara knew exactly why, because she had seen this kind of damage before. “So she couldn’t fight back while he raped her.”