Blindsighted (3 page)

Sara lifted Sibyl's hands, checking under her fingernails. "There's nothing here. I imagine she was taken by surprise, didn't know what was going on until it was too late."

"You think it was quick?"

"Not too quick. Whatever he did, it looks planned to me. The scene was very clean until I came along. She would've bled out on the toilet if I hadn't had to use the rest room." Sara looked away. "Or maybe not, if I hadn't been late getting here."

Jeffrey tried to comfort her. "You can't know that."

She shrugged this off. "There's some bruising on her wrists where her arms hit the handicap bars. Also"-she opened Sibyl's legs slightly-"see here on her legs?"

Jeffrey followed her directions. The skin on the inside of both knees was scratched away. "What's that?" he asked.

"The toilet seat," she said. "The bottom edge is pretty sharp. I imagine she squeezed her legs together as she struggled. You can see some of the skin caught on the seat."

Jeffrey glanced at the toilet, then looked back at Sara. "Think he pushed her back on the toilet, then stabbed her?"

Sara didn't answer him. Instead, she pointed to Sibyl's bare torso. "The incision isn't deep until the middle of the cross," she explained, pressing into the abdomen, opening up the wound so that he could see. "I'd guess it was a double-edged blade. You can see the v shape on either side of the puncture." Sara easily slipped her index finger inside the wound. The skin made a sucking noise as she did this, and Jeffrey gritted his teeth, looking away. When he turned back, Sara was giving him a questioning look.

She asked, "Are you okay?"

He nodded, afraid to open his mouth.

She moved her finger around inside the hole in Sibyl Adams's chest. Blood seeped out from the wound. "I'd say it's at least a four-inch blade," she concluded, keeping her eyes on him. "Is this bothering you?"

He shook his head, even though the sound was making his stomach turn.

Sara slipped her finger out, continuing, "It was a very sharp blade. There's no hesitation around the incision, so like I said, he knew what he was doing when he started."

"What was he doing?"

Her tone was very matter-of-fact. "He was carving her stomach. His strokes were very assured, one down, one across, then a thrust into the upper torso. That was the death blow, I would imagine. Cause will probably be exsanguination."

"She bled to death?"

Sara shrugged. "Best guess right now, yeah. She bled to death. It probably took about ten minutes. The convulsions were from shock."

Jeffrey couldn't suppress the shudder that came. He indicated the wound. "It's a cross, right?"

Sara studied the cuts. "I'd say so. I mean, it can't really be anything else, can it?"

"Do you think this is some kind of religious statement?"

"Who can tell with rape?" she said, stopping at the look on his face. "What?"

"She was raped?" he said, glancing at Sibyl Adams, checking for obvious signs of damage. There was no bruising on her thighs or scrapes around the pelvic area. "Did you find anything?"

Sara was quiet. Finally she said, "No. I mean, I don't know."

"What did you find?"

"Nothing." She snapped off her gloves. "Just what I told you. I can finish this back at the morgue."

"I don't-"

"I'll call Carlos to come get her," she said, referring to her assistant at the morgue. "Meet me back there when you're finished here, okay?" When he didn't answer, she said, "I don't know about the rape, Jeff. Really. It was just a guess."

Jeffrey didn't know what to say. One thing he knew about his ex-wife was she did not make guesses in the field. "Sara?" he asked. Then, "Are you all right?"

Sara gave a mirthless laugh. "Am I all right?" she repeated. "Jesus, Jeffrey, what a stupid question." She walked over to the door, but didn't open it. When she spoke, her words came out clear and succinct. "You have to find the person who did this," she said.

"I know."

"No, Jeffrey." Sara turned around, giving him a piercing look. "This is a ritualistic attack, not a one-off. Look at her body. Look at the way she was left here." Sara paused, then continued, "Whoever killed Sibyl Adams planned it out carefully. He knew where to find her. He followed her into the bathroom. This is a methodical murder by someone who wants to make a statement."

He felt light-headed as he realized that what she was saying was the truth. He had seen this kind of murder before. He knew exactly what she was talking about. This was not the work of an amateur. Whoever had done this was probably working his way up to something much more dramatic at this very moment.

Sara still did not seem to think he understood. "Do you think he'll stop with one?"

Jeffrey did not hesitate this time. "No."

Chapter Three

LENA Adams frowned, flashing her headlights at the blue Honda Civic in front of her. The posted speed limit on this particular stretch of Georgia I-20 was sixty-five, but like most rural Georgians, Lena saw the signs as little more than a suggestion for tourists on their way to and from Florida. Case in point, the Civic's tags were from Ohio.

"Come on," she groaned, checking her speedometer. She was boxed in by an eighteen-wheeler on her right and the Civic-driving Yankee in front, who was obviously determined to keep her just above the speed limit. For a second, Lena wished she had taken one of Grant County 's cruisers. Not only was it a smoother ride than her Celica, there was the added pleasure of scaring the crap out of speeders.

Miraculously, the eighteen-wheeler slowed, letting the Civic pull over. Lena gave a cheery wave as the driver flipped her off. She hoped he had learned his lesson. Driving through the South was Darwinism at its best.

The Celiea climbed up to eighty-five as she sped out of the Macon city limits. Lena took a cassette tape out of its case. Sibyl had made her some driving music for the trip back. Lena slid the tape into the radio and smiled when the music started, recognizing the opening to Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation." The song had been the sisters' anthem during high school, and they had spent many a night speeding through back roads, singing "I don't give a damn about my bad reputation" at the top of their lungs. Thanks to an errant uncle, the girls were considered trash without the benefit of being particularly poor or, courtesy of their half-Spanish mother, all that white.

Running evidence up to the GBI lab in Macon was little more than courier work in the big scheme of things, but Lena was glad to have the assignment. Jeffrey had said she could take the day to cool down, his euphemism for getting her temper under control. Frank Wallace and Lena were butting heads over the same problem that had haunted their partnership from the beginning. At fifty-eight years old, Frank wasn't thrilled to have women on the force, let alone one as a partner. He was constantly leaving Lena out of investigations, while she was constantly trying to force herself back in. Something would have to give. As Frank was two years from retirement, Lena knew she would not be the one to bend first.

In truth, Frank was not a bad guy. Other than suffering from the kind of crankiness brought on by old age, he seemed to make an effort. On a good day, she could understand that his overbearing attitude came from a deeper place than his ego. He was the kind of man who opened doors for women and took his hat off indoors. Frank was even a Mason at the local lodge. He was not the kind of guy who would let his female partner lead an interrogation, let alone take point on a house raid. On a bad day, Lena wanted to lock him in his garage with the car running.

Jeffrey was right about the trip cooling her down. Lena made good time to Macon, shaving a full thirty minutes off the drive courtesy of the Celica's V-6. She liked her boss, who was the exact opposite of Frank Wallace. Frank was all gut instinct, while Jeffrey was more cerebral. Jeffrey was also the kind of man who was comfortable around women and did not mind when they voiced their opinions. The fact that he had from day one groomed Lena for her job as detective was not lost on her. Jeffrey did not promote her to meet some county quota or make himself look better than his predecessor; this was Grant County, after all, a town that had not even been on the maps until fifty years ago. Jeffrey had given Lena the job because he respected her work and her mind. The fact that she was a woman had nothing to do with it.

"Shit," Lena hissed, catching the flash of blue lights behind her. She slowed the car, pulling over as the Civic passed her. The Yankee beeped his horn and waved. It was Lena 's turn to give the Ohioan a one-finger salute.

The Georgia highway patrolman took his time getting out of his car. Lena turned to her purse in the backseat, rummaging around for her badge. When she turned back around, she was surprised to see the cop standing just to the rear of her vehicle. His hand was on his weapon, and she kicked herself for not waiting for him to come to the car. He probably thought she was looking for a gun.

Lena dropped the badge in her lap and held her hands in the air, offering, "Sorry," out the open window.

The cop took a tentative step forward, his square jaw working as he came up to the car. He took off his sunglasses and gave her a close look.

"Listen," she said, hands still raised. "I'm on the job."

He interrupted her. "Are you Detective Salena Adams?"

She lowered her hands, giving the patrolman a questioning look. He was kind of short, but his upper body was muscled in that way short men have of overcompensating for what they lacked in height. His arms were so thick they wouldn't rest flat to his sides. The buttons of his uniform were pulled tight against his chest.

"It's Lena," she offered, glancing at his name tag. "Do I know you?"

"No, ma'am," he returned, slipping on his sunglasses. "We got a call from your chief. I'm supposed to escort you back to Grant County."

"I'm sorry?" Lena asked, sure she hadn't heard correctly. "My chief? Jeffrey Tolliver?"

He gave a curt nod. "Yes, ma'am." Before she could ask him any further questions, he was walking back to his car. Lena waited for the patrolman to pull back onto the road, then started off after him. He sped up quickly, edging up to ninety within minutes. They passed the blue Civic, but Lena did not pay much attention. All she could think was, What did I do this time?

Chapter Four

THOUGH the Heartsdale Medical Center anchored the end of Main Street, it was not capable of looking nearly as important as its name would imply. Just two stories tall, the small hospital was equipped to do little more than handle whatever scrapes and upset stomachs couldn't wait for doctors' hours. There was a larger hospital about thirty minutes away in Augusta that handled the serious cases. If not for the county morgue being housed in the basement, the medical center would have been torn down to make way for student housing a long time ago.

Like the rest of the town, the hospital had been built during the town's upswing in the 1930s. The main floors had been renovated since then, but the morgue was obviously not important to the hospital board. The walls were lined with light blue tile that was so old it was coming back into style. The floors were a mixed check pattern of green and tan linoleum. The ceiling overhead had seen its share of water damage, but most of it had been patched. The equipment was dated but functional.

Sara's office was in the back, separated from the rest of the morgue by a large glass window. She sat behind her desk, looking out the window, trying to collect her thoughts. She concentrated on the white noise of the morgue: the air compressor on the freezer, the swish-swish of the water hose as Carlos washed down the floor. Since they were below ground, the walls of the morgue absorbed rather than deflected the sounds, and Sara felt oddly comforted by the familiar hums and swishes. The shrill ring of the phone interrupted the silence.

"Sara Linton," she said, expecting Jeffrey. Instead, it was her father.

"Hey, baby."

Sara smiled, feeling a lightness overcome her at the sound of Eddie Linton's voice. "Hey, Daddy."

"I've got a joke for you."

"Yeah?" She tried to keep her tone light, knowing humor was her father's way of dealing with stress. "What's that?"

"A pediatrician, a lawyer, and a priest were on the
Titanic
when it started to go down," he began. "The pediatrician says, 'Save the children.' The lawyer says, 'Fuck the children!' And the priest says, 'Do we have time?' "

Sara laughed, more for her father's benefit than anything else. He was quiet, waiting for her to talk. She asked, "How's Tessie?"

"Taking a nap," he reported. "How about you?"

"Oh, I'm okay." Sara started drawing circles on her desk calendar. She wasn't normally a doodler, but she needed something to do with her hands. Part of her wanted to check her briefcase, to see if Tessa had thought to put the postcard in there. Part of her did not want to know where it was.

Eddie interrupted her thoughts. "Mom says you have to come to breakfast tomorrow."

"Yeah?" Sara asked, drawing squares over the circles.

His voice took on a singsong quality. "Waffles and grits and toast and bacon."

"Hey," Jeffrey said.

Sara jerked her head up, dropping the pen. "You scared me," she said, then, to her father, "Daddy, Jeffrey's here-"

Eddie Linton made a series of unintelligible noises. In his opinion, there was nothing wrong with Jeffrey Tolliver that a solid brick to the head would not fix.

"All right," Sara said into the phone, giving Jeffrey a tight smile. He was looking at the etched sign on the glass, where her father had slapped a piece of masking tape over the last name TOLLIVER and written in LINTON with a black marker. Since Jeffrey had cheated on Sara with the only sign maker in town, it was doubtful that the lettering would be more professionally fixed anytime soon.

"Daddy," Sara interrupted, "I'll see you in the morning." She hung up the phone before he could get another word in.

Jeffrey asked, "Let me guess, he sends his love."

Sara ignored the question, not wanting to get into a personal conversation with Jeffrey. This was how he sucked her back in, making her think that he was a normal person capable of being honest and supportive when in actuality the minute Jeffrey felt like he was back in Sara's good graces he'd probably run for cover. Or, under the covers, to be more exact.

He said, "How's Tessa doing?"

"Fine," Sara said, taking her glasses out of their case. She slid them on, asking, "Where's Lena?"

He glanced at the clock on the wall. "About an hour away. Frank's going to page me when she's ten minutes out."

Sara stood, adjusting the waist of her scrubs. She had showered in the hospital lounge, storing her bloodied clothes in an evidence bag in case they were needed for trial.

She asked, "Have you thought about what you're going to tell her?"

He shook his head no. "I'm hoping we can get something concrete before I talk to her. Lena 's a cop. She's going to want answers."

Sara leaned over the desk, knocking on the glass. Carlos looked up. "You can go now," she said. Then, explaining to Jeffrey, "He's going to run blood and urine up to the crime lab. They're going to put it through tonight."

"Good."

Sara sat back in her chair. "Did you get anything from the bathroom?"

"We found her cane and glasses behind the toilet. They were wiped clean."

"What about the stall door?"

"Nothing," he said. "I mean, not nothing, but
every
woman in town's been in and out of that place. Last count Matt had over fifty different prints." He took some Polaroids out of his pocket and tossed them onto the desk. There were close-ups of the body lying on the floor alongside pictures of Sara's bloody shoe and hand prints.

Sara picked up one of these, saying, "I guess it didn't help matters that I contaminated the scene."

"It's not like you had a choice."

She kept her thoughts to herself, putting the pictures in logical sequence.

He repeated her earlier evaluation. "Whoever did this knew what he was doing. He knew she would go to the restaurant alone. He knew she couldn't see. He knew the place would be deserted that time of day."

"You think he was waiting for her?"

Jeffrey gave a shrug. "Seems that way. He probably came in and out the back door. Pete had disconnected the alarm so they could leave it open to air the place out."

"Yeah," she said, remembering the back door to the diner was propped open more times than not.

"So, we're looking for someone who knew her activities, right? Somebody who was familiar with the layout of the diner."

Sara did not want to answer this question, which implied that the killer was someone living in Grant, someone who knew the people and places the way only a resident could. Instead, she stood and walked back to the metal filing cabinet on the other side of her desk. She took out a fresh lab coat and slipped it on, saying, "I've already taken X rays and checked her clothing. Other than that, she's ready."

Jeffrey turned, staring out at the table in the center of the morgue. Sara looked, too, thinking that Sibyl Adams was a lot smaller in death than she seemed in life. Even Sara couldn't get used to the way death reduced people.

Jeffrey asked, "Did you know her well?"

Sara mulled over his question. Finally she said, "I guess. We both did career day at the middle school last year. Then, you know, I ran into her at the library sometimes."

"The library?" Jeffrey asked. "I thought she was blind."

"They have books on tape there, I guess." She stopped in front of him, crossing her arms. "Listen, I have to tell you this. Lena and I kind of had a fight a few weeks back."

Obviously, he was surprised. Sara was surprised, too. There were not a lot of people in town she did not get along with. But Lena Adams was certainly one of them.

Sara explained, "She called Nick Shelton at the GBI asking for a tox report on a case."

Jeffrey shook his head side to side, not understanding. "Why?"

Sara shrugged. She still didn't know why Lena had tried to go over her head, especially considering it was well known that Sara had a very good working relationship with Nick Shelton, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's field agent for Grant County.

"And?" Jeffrey prompted.

"I don't know what Lena thought she could accomplish by calling Nick directly. We had it out. No blood was shed, but I wouldn't say we parted on friendly terms."

Jeffrey shrugged, as if to say, What can you do? Lena had made a career out of ticking people off. Back when Sara and Jeffrey were married, Jeffrey had often voiced his concern over Lena 's impetuous behavior.

"If she was"-he stopped, then-"if she was raped, Sara. I don't know."

"Let's get started," Sara answered quickly, walking past him into the morgue. She stood in front of the supply cabinet, looking for a surgical gown. She paused, her hands on the doors as she played back their conversation in her mind, wondering how it had turned from a forensic evaluation into a discussion about Jeffrey's potential outrage had Sibyl Adams not just been killed but raped as well.

"Sara?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

Sara felt her anger spark at his stupid question. "What's wrong?" She found the gown and slammed the doors shut. The metal frame rattled from the force. Sara turned, ripping the sterile pack open. "What's wrong is I'm tired of you asking me what's wrong when it's pretty damn obvious what's wrong." She paused, snapping out the gown. "Think about it, Jeffrey. A woman literally died in my arms today. Not just a stranger, someone I knew. I should be at home right now taking a long shower or walking the dogs and instead I've got to go in there and cut her up, worse than she already is, so I can tell you whether or not you need to start pulling in all the perverts in town."

Her hands shook with anger as she tried to get into the gown. The sleeve was just out of her reach, and she was turning to get a better angle when Jeffrey moved to help her.

Her tone was nasty when she snapped, "I've got it." He held his hands up, palms toward her as if in surrender. "Sorry." Sara fumbled with the ties on the gown, ending up knotting the strings together. "Shit," she hissed, trying to work them back out. Jeffrey offered, "I could get Brad to go walk the dogs." Sara dropped her hands, giving up. "That's not the point, Jeffrey."

"I know it's not," he returned, approaching her the way he might a rabid dog. He took the strings and she looked down, watching him work out the knot. Sara let her gaze travel to the top of his head, noting a few gray strands in with the black. She wanted to will into him the ability to comfort her instead of trying to make a joke of everything. She wanted for him to magically develop the capacity for empathy. After ten years, she should have known better.

He loosened the knot with a smile, as if with this simple act he had just made everything better. He said, "There." Sara took over, tying the strings together in a bow. He put his hand under her chin. "You're okay," he said, not a question this time.

"Yeah," she agreed, stepping away. "I'm okay." She pulled out a pair of latex gloves, turning to the task at hand. "Let's just get the prelim over with before Lena gets back."

Sara walked over to the porcelain autopsy table bolted to the floor in the middle of the room. Curved with high sides, the white table hugged Sibyl's small body. Carlos had placed her head on a black rubber block and draped a white sheet over her. Except for the black bruise over her eye, she could be sleeping.

"Lord," Sara muttered as she folded back the sheet. Taking the body out of the kill zone had intensified the damage. Under the bright lights of the morgue, every aspect of the wound stood out. The incisions were long and sharp across the abdomen, forming an almost perfect cross. The skin puckered in places, drawing her attention away from the deep gouge at the intersection of the cross. Postmortem, wounds took on a dark, almost black, appearance. The rifts in Sibyl Adams's skin gaped open like tiny wet mouths.

"She didn't have a lot of body fat," Sara explained. She indicated the belly, where the incision opened wider just above the navel. The cut there was deeper, and the skin was pulled apart like a tight shirt that had popped a button. "There's fecal matter in the lower abdomen where the intestines were breached by the blade. I don't know if it was this deep on purpose or if the depth was accidental. It looks stretched."

She indicated the edges of the wound. "You can see the striation here at the tip of the wound. Maybe he moved the knife around. Twisted it. Also…" She paused, figuring things out as she went along. "There are traces of excrement on her hands as well as the bars in the stall, so I have to think she was cut, she put her hands to her belly, then she wrapped her hands around the bars for some reason."

She looked up at Jeffrey to see how he was holding up. He seemed rooted to the floor, transfixed by Sibyls body. Sara knew from her own experience that the mind could play tricks, smoothing out the sharp lines of violence. Even for Sara, seeing Sibyl again was perhaps worse than seeing her the first time.

Sara put her hands on the body, surprised that it was still warm. The temperature in the morgue was always low, even during the summer, because the room was underground. Sibyl should have been a lot cooler by now.

"Sara?" Jeffrey asked.

"Nothing," she answered, not prepared to make guesses. She pressed around the wound in the center of the cross. "It was a double-edged knife," she began. "Which helps you out some. Most stabbings are serrated hunting knives, right?"

"Yeah."

She pointed to a tan-looking mark around the center wound. Cleaning the body, Sara had been able to see a lot more than her initial exam in the bathroom had revealed. "This is from the cross guard, so he put it all the way in. I imagine I'll see some chipping on the spine when I open her up. I felt some irregularities when I put my finger in. There's probably some chipped bone still in there."

Jeffrey nodded for her to continue.

"If we're lucky, we'll get some kind of impression from the blade. If not that, then maybe something from the cross guard bruising. I can remove and fix the skin after Lena sees her."

She pointed to the puncture wound at the center of the cross. "This was a hard stab, so I would imagine the killer did it from a superior position. See the way the wound is angled at about a forty-five?" She studied the incision, trying to make sense of it. "I would almost say that the belly stab is different from the chest wound. It doesn't make sense."