A Grant County Collection (42 page)

There was one other woman in the waiting room, an almost pathetically thin mousy blonde who kept fidgeting with her hands, avoiding Lena's gaze almost as keenly as Lena avoided hers. She was a few years younger than Lena, but kept her hair swept up on top of her head in a tight bun like she was an old lady. Lena found herself wondering what had brought the girl there – was she a college student whose carefully planned life had hit a snag? A careless flirt who had gone too far at a party? The victim of some drunken uncle's affection?

Lena didn't ask her – didn't have the nerve and did not want to open herself up to the same question. So they sat for nearly an hour, two prisoners awaiting a death sentence, both consumed by the guilt of their crimes. Lena had almost been relieved when they took her back to the procedure room, doubly relieved to see Hank when they finally wheeled her outside to the parking lot. He must have paced beside his car, chain-smoking the entire time. The pavement was littered with brown butts that he had smoked down to the filters.

Afterward, he had taken her to a hotel on Tenth Street, knowing they should stay in Atlanta in case she had a reaction or needed help. Reese, the town where Hank had raised Lena and Sibyl and where he still lived, was a small town and people didn't have anything better to do than talk about their neighbors. Barring that, neither one of them trusted the local doctor to know what to do if Lena needed help. The man refused to write prescriptions for birth control and was often quoted in the local paper saying that the problem with the town's rowdy youth was that their mothers had jobs instead of staying home to raise their kids like God intended.

The hotel room was nicer than anything Lena had ever stayed in, a sort of mini-suite with a sitting area. Hank had stayed on the couch watching TV with the sound turned down low, ordering room service when he had to, not even going out to smoke. At night, he folded his lanky body onto the couch, his light snores keeping Lena up, but comforting her at the same time.

She had told Ethan she was going to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's training lab for a course on crime scene processing that Jeffrey wanted her to attend. She had told Nan, her roommate, that she was going to stay with Hank to go through some of Sibyl's things. In retrospect, she knew she should have told them the same lie to make it easier, but for some reason lying to Nan had flustered Lena. Her sister and Nan had been lovers, made a life together. After Sibyl died, Nan had tried to take Lena under her wing, a poor substitute for Sibyl, but at least she had tried. Lena still did not know why she could not bring herself to tell the other woman the real reason for the trip.

Nan was a lesbian, and judging by the mail she got, she was probably some kind of feminist. She would have been an easier person to take to the clinic than Hank, vocalizing her support instead of seething in quiet disdain. Nan would have probably raised her fist at the protesters outside who were yelling 'Baby killer' and 'Murderer' as the nurse took Lena to the car in a squeaky old wheelchair. Nan probably would have comforted Lena, maybe brought her tea and made her eat something instead of letting her hold on to her hunger like a punishment, relishing the dizziness and the burning pain in her stomach. She certainly wouldn't have let Lena lie around in bed all day staring out the window.

Which was as good a reason as any to keep all of this from her. Nan knew too many bad things about Lena already. There was no need to add another failure to the list.

Hank said, 'You need to talk to somebody.'

Lena rested her cheek against her palm, staring over his shoulder. She was so tired her eyelids fluttered when she blinked. Five minutes. She would give him five minutes then go back to bed.

'What you did . . .' He let his voice trail off. 'I understand why you did it. I really do.'

'Thanks,' she said, glib.

'I wish I had it in me,' he began, clenching his hands. 'I'd tear that boy apart and bury him where nobody'd ever think to look.'

They'd had this conversation before. Mostly, Hank talked and Lena just stared, waiting for him to realize she was not going to participate. He had gone to too many meetings, seen too many drunks and addicts pouring out their hearts to a bunch of strangers just for a little plastic chip to carry around in their pockets.

'I would'a raised it,' he said, not the first time he had offered. 'Just like I raised you and your sister.'

'Yeah,' she said, pulling her robe tighter around her. 'You did such a great job.'

'You never let me in.'

'Into what?' she asked. Sibyl had always been his favorite. As a child she had been more pliable, more eager to please. Lena had been the uncontrollable one, the one who wanted to push the limits.

She realized that she was rubbing her belly and made herself stop. Ethan had punched her square in the stomach when she had told him that no, she really wasn't pregnant, it was a false alarm. He had warned her that if she ever killed a child of theirs, he would kill her, too. He warned her about a lot of things she didn't listen to.

'You're such a strong person,' Hank said. 'I don't understand why you let that boy control you.'

She would have explained it if she knew how. Men didn't get it. They didn't understand that it didn't matter how strong you were, mentally or physically. What mattered was that need you felt in your gut, and how they made the ache go away. Lena used to have such disgust for women who let men knock them around. What was wrong with them? What made them so weak that they didn't care about themselves? They were pathetic, getting exactly what they asked for. Sometimes she had wanted to slap them around herself, tell them to straighten up, stop being a doormat.

From the inside, she saw it differently. As easy as it was to hate Ethan when he wasn't around, when he was there and being sweet, she never wanted him to leave. As bad as her life was, he could make it better or worse, depending on his mood. Giving him that control, that responsibility, was almost a relief, one more thing she didn't have to deal with. And, to be honest, sometimes she hit him back. Sometimes she hit him first.

Every woman who'd ever been slapped around said she had asked for it, set off her boyfriend or husband by making him mad or burning dinner or whatever it was they used to justify having the shit beaten out of them, but Lena knew for a fact that she brought out Ethan's bad side. He had wanted to change. When she first met him, he was trying very hard to be a different person, a good person. If Hank knew this particular fact, he would be shocked if not sickened. It wasn't Ethan who caused the bruises, it was Lena. She was the one who kept pulling him back in. She was the one who kept baiting him and slapping him until he got angry enough to explode, and when he was on top of her, beating her, fucking her, she felt alive. She felt reborn.

There was no way she could have brought a baby into this world. She would not wish her fucked-up life on anyone.

Hank leaned his elbows on his knees. 'I just want to understand.'

With his history, Hank of all people should understand. Ethan was bad for her. He turned her into the kind of person she loathed, and yet she kept going back for more. He was the worst kind of addiction because no one but Lena could understand the draw.

Musical trilling came from the bedroom, and it took Lena a second to realize the noise was her cell phone.

Hank saw her start to stand and said, 'I'll get it,' going into the bedroom before she could stop him. She heard him answer the phone, say, 'Wait a minute.'

He came back into the kitchen with his jaw set. 'It's your boss,' he said, handing her the phone.

Jeffrey's voice was as dire as Hank's mood. 'Lena,' he began. 'I know you've got one more day on your vacation, but I need you to come in.'

She looked at the clock on the wall, tried to think how long it would take to pack and get back to Grant County. For the first time that week, she could feel her heart beating again, adrenaline flooding into her bloodstream and making her feel like she was waking up from a long sleep.

She avoided Hank's gaze, offering, 'I can be there in three hours.'

'Good,' Jeffrey said. 'Meet me at the morgue.'

Sara winced as she wrapped a Band-Aid around a broken fingernail. Her hands felt bruised from digging and small scratches gouged into the tips of her fingers like tiny pinpricks. She would have to be extra careful at the clinic this week, making sure the wounds were covered at all times. As she bandaged her thumb, her mind flashed to the piece of fingernail she had found stuck in the strip of wood, and she felt guilty for worrying about her petty problems. Sara could not imagine what the girl's last moments had been like, but she knew that before the day was over, she would have to do just that.

Working in the morgue, Sara had seen the terrible ways that people can die – stabbings, shootings, beatings, strangulations. She tried to look at each case with a clinical eye, but sometimes, a victim would become a living, breathing thing, beseeching Sara to help. Lying dead in that box out in the woods, the girl had called to Sara. The look of fear etched into every line of her face, the hand grasping for some hold on to life – all beseeched someone, anyone, to help. The girl's last moments must have been horrific. Sara could think of nothing more terrifying than being buried alive.

The telephone rang in her office, and Sara jogged across the room to answer before the machine picked up. She was a second too late, and the speaker echoed a screech of feedback as she picked up the phone.

'Sara?' Jeffrey asked.

'Yeah,' she told him, switching off the machine. 'Sorry.'

'We haven't found anything,' he said, and she could hear the frustration in his voice.

'No missing persons?'

'There was a girl a few weeks back,' he told her. 'But she turned up at her grandmother's yesterday. Hold on.' She heard him mumble something, then come back on the line. 'I'll call you right back.'

The phone clicked before Sara could respond. She sat back in her chair, looking down at her desk, noticing the neat stacks of papers and memos. All of her pens were in a cup and the phone was perfectly aligned with the edge of the metal desk. Carlos, her assistant, worked full-time at the morgue but he had whole days when there was nothing for him to do but twiddle his thumbs and wait for someone to die. He had obviously kept himself busy straightening her office. Sara traced a scratch along the top of the Formica, thinking she had never noticed the faux wood laminate in all the years she had worked here.

She thought about the wood used to build the box that held the girl. The lumber looked new, and the screen mesh covering the pipe had obviously been wrapped around the top in order to keep debris from blocking the air supply. Someone was keeping the girl there, holding her there, for his own sick purposes. Was her abductor somewhere right now thinking about her trapped in the box, getting some sort of sexual thrill from the power he thought he held over her? Had he already gotten his satisfaction, simply leaving her there to die?

Sara startled as the phone rang. She picked it up, asking, 'Jeffrey?'

'Just a minute.' He covered the phone as he spoke to someone, and Sara waited until he asked her, 'How old do you think she is?'

Sara did not like guessing, but she said, 'Anywhere from sixteen to nineteen. It's hard to tell at this stage.'

He relayed this information to someone in the field, then asked Sara, 'You think somebody made her put on those clothes?'

'I don't know,' she answered, wondering where he was going with this.

'The bottom of her socks are clean.'

'He could have taken away her shoes after she got in the box,' Sara suggested. Then, realizing his true concern, she added, 'I'll have to get her on the table before I can tell if she was sexually assaulted.'

'Maybe he was waiting for that,' Jeffrey hypothesized, and they were both quiet for a moment as they considered this. 'It's pouring down rain here,' he said. 'We're trying to dig out the box, see if we can find anything on it.'

'The lumber looked new.'

'There's mold growing on the side,' he told her. 'Maybe buried like that, it wouldn't weather as quickly.'

'It's pressure treated?'

'Yeah,' he said. 'The joints are all mitered. Whoever built this didn't just throw it together. It took some skill.' He paused a moment, but she didn't hear him talking to anyone. Finally, he said, 'She looks like a kid, Sara.'

'I know.'

'Somebody's missing her,' he said. 'She didn't just run away.'

Sara was silent. She had seen too many secrets revealed during an autopsy to make a snap judgment about the girl. There could be any number of circumstances that had brought her to that dark place in the woods.

'We put out a wire,' Jeffrey said. 'Statewide.'

'You think she was transported?' Sara asked, surprised. For some reason, she had assumed the girl was local.

'It's a public forest,' he said. 'We get all kinds of people in and out of here.'

'That spot, though . . .' Sara let her voice trail off, wondering if there was a night last week when she had looked out her window, darkness obscuring the girl and her abductor as he buried her alive across the lake.

'He would want to check on her,' Jeffrey said, echoing Sara's earlier thoughts about the girl's abductor. 'We're asking neighbors if they've seen anybody in or out recently who looked like they didn't belong.'

'I jog through there all the time,' Sara told him. 'I've never seen anyone. We wouldn't have even known she was there if you hadn't tripped.'

'Brad's trying to get fingerprints off the pipe.'

'Maybe you should dust for prints,' she said. 'Or I will.'

'Brad knows what he's doing.'

'No,' she said. 'You cut your hand. Your blood is on that pipe.'

Jeffrey paused a second. 'He's wearing gloves.'

'Goggles, too?' she asked, feeling like a hall monitor but knowing she had to raise the issue. Jeffrey did not respond, so she spelled it out for him. 'I don't want to be a pain about this, but we should be careful until we find out. You would never forgive yourself if . . .' She stopped, deciding to let him fill in the rest. When he still did not respond, she asked, 'Jeffrey?'

'I'll send it back with Carlos,' he said, but she could tell he was irritated.

'I'm sorry,' she apologized, though she was not sure why.

He was quiet again, and she could hear the crackling from his cell phone as he changed position, probably wanting to get away from the scene.

He asked, 'How do you think she died?'

Sara let out a sigh before answering. She hated speculating. 'From the way we found her, I would guess she ran out of air.'

'But what about the pipe?'

'Maybe it was too restrictive. Maybe she panicked.' Sara paused. 'This is why I don't like giving an opinion without all the facts. There could be an underlying cause, something to do with her heart. She could be diabetic. She could be anything. I just won't know until I get her on the table – and then I might not know for certain until all the tests are back, and I might not even know then.'

Jeffrey seemed to be considering the options. 'You think she panicked?'

'I know I would.'

'She had the flashlight,' he pointed out. 'The batteries were working.'

'That's a small consolation.'

'I want to get a good photo of her to send out once she's cleaned up. There has to be someone looking for her.'

'She had provisions. I can't imagine whoever put her in there was planning on leaving her indefinitely.'

'I called Nick,' he said, referring to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's local field agent. 'He's going into the office to see if he can pull up any matches on the computer. This could be some kind of kidnapping for ransom.'

For some reason, this made Sara feel better than thinking the girl had been snatched from her home for more sadistic purposes.

He said, 'Lena should be at the morgue within the hour.'

'You want me to call you when she gets here?'

'No,' he said. 'We're losing daylight. I'll head over as soon as we secure the scene.' He hesitated, like there was more he wanted to say.

'What is it?' Sara asked.

'She's just a kid.'

'I know.'

He cleared his throat. 'Someone's looking for her, Sara. We need to find out who she is.'

'We will.'

He paused again before saying, 'I'll be there as soon as I can.'

She gently placed the receiver back in the cradle, Jeffrey's words echoing in her mind. A little over a year ago, he had been forced to shoot a young girl in the line of duty. Sara had been there, had watched the scene play out like a nightmare, and she knew that Jeffrey had not had a choice, just like she knew that he would never forgive himself for his part in the girl's death.

Sara walked over to the filing cabinet against the wall, gathering paperwork for the autopsy. Though the cause of death was probably asphyxiation, central blood and urine would have to be collected, labeled and sent to the state lab where it would languish until the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's overburdened staff could get to it. Tissue would have to be processed and stored in the morgue for at least three years. Trace evidence would have to be collected, dated and sealed into paper bags. Depending on what Sara found, a rape kit might have to be performed: fingernails scraped and clipped, vagina, anus and mouth swabbed, DNA collected for processing. Organs would be weighed, arms and legs measured. Hair color, eye color, birthmarks, age, race, gender, number of teeth, scars, bruises, anatomical abnormalities – all of these would be noted on the appropriate form. In the next few hours, Sara would be able to tell Jeffrey everything there was to know about the girl except for the one thing that really mattered to him: her name.

Sara opened her logbook to assign a case number. To the coroner's office, she would be #8472. Presently, there were only two cases of unidentified bodies found in Grant County, so the police would refer to her as Jane Doe number three. Sara felt an overwhelming sadness as she wrote this title in the log. Until a family member was found, the victim would simply be a series of numbers.

Sara pulled out another stack of forms, thumbing through them until she found the US Standard Certificate of Death. By law, Sara had forty-eight hours to submit a death certificate for the girl. The process of changing the victim from a person into a numerical sequence would be amplified at each step. After the autopsy, Sara would find the corresponding code that signified mode of death and put it in the correct box on the form. The form would be sent to the National Center for Health Statistics, which would in turn report the death to the World Health Organization. There, the girl would be catalogued and analyzed, given more codes, more numbers, which would be assimilated into other data from around the country, then around the world. The fact that she had a family, friends, perhaps lovers, would never enter into the equation.

Again, Sara thought about the girl lying in the wooden coffin, the terrified look on her face. She was someone's daughter. When she was born, someone had looked into the infant's face and given her a name. Someone had loved her.

The ancient gears of the elevator whirred into motion, and Sara set the paperwork aside as she stood from her desk. She waited at the elevator doors, listening to the groaning machinery as the car made its way down the shaft. Carlos was incredibly serious, and one of the few jokes Sara had ever heard him make had to do with plummeting to his death inside the ancient contraption.

The floor indicator over the doors was the old-fashioned kind, a clock with three numbers. The needle hovered between one and zero, barely moving. Sara leaned back against the wall, counting the seconds in her head. She was on thirty-eight and about to call building maintenance when a loud ding echoed in the tiled room and the doors slowly slid open.

Carlos stood behind the gurney, his eyes wide. 'I thought it was stuck,' he murmured in his heavily accented English.

'Let me help,' she offered, taking the end of the gurney so that he wouldn't have to angle it out into the room by himself. The girl's arm was still stuck up at a shallow angle where she had tried to claw her way out of the box, and Sara had to lift the gurney into a turn so that it would not catch against the door.

She asked, 'Did you get X-rays upstairs?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'Weight?'

'A hundred thirteen pounds,' he told her. 'Five feet three inches.'

Sara made a note of this on the dry erase board bolted to the wall. She capped the marker before saying, 'Let's get her on the table.'

At the scene, Carlos had placed the girl in a black body bag, and together, they grabbed the corners of the bag and lifted her onto the table. Sara helped him with the zipper, working quietly alongside him as they prepared her for autopsy. After putting on a pair of gloves, Carlos cut through the brown paper bags that had been placed over her hands to preserve any evidence. Her long hair was tangled in places, but still managed to cascade over the side of the table. Sara gloved herself and tucked the hair around the body, aware that she was studiously avoiding the horror-stricken mask of the girl's face. A quick glance at Carlos proved he was doing the same.

As Carlos began undressing the girl, Sara walked over to the metal cabinet by the sinks and took out a surgical gown and goggles. She laid these on a tray by the table, feeling an almost unbearable sadness as Carlos exposed the girl's milk-white flesh to the harsh lights of the morgue. Her small breasts were covered with what looked like a training bra and she was wearing a pair of high-legged cotton briefs that Sara always associated with the elderly; Granny Earnshaw had given Sara and Tessa a ten-pair pack of the same style every year for Christmas, and Tessa had always called them granny panties.

'No label,' Carlos said, and Sara went over to see for herself. He had spread the dress on a piece of brown paper to catch any trace evidence. Sara changed her gloves before touching the material, not wanting to cross-contaminate. The dress was cut from a simple pattern, long sleeves with a stiff collar. She guessed the material to be some kind of heavy cotton blend.

Sara checked the stitching, saying, 'It doesn't look factory made,' thinking this might be a clue in its own right. Aside from an ill-fated home economics course in high school, Sara had never sewn more than a button. Whoever had sewn the dress obviously knew what they were doing.