The Silent Wife: From the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author comes a gripping new crime thriller (Will Trent Series, Book 10)

by Karin Slaughter

Sara slipped her fingers under the rim of the foot panel. She waited for Gary to do the same with the lid.

  They both lifted at the same time.

  Will was standing behind Gary, but his height gave him a direct view into the casket.

  Shay Van Dorne’s skin looked yellow and waxy. Bloating swelled her neck. Mold blotched her forehead. She was dressed in a black silk shirt and long black skirt. Her brunette hair was lank around her shoulders. Her cheeks were unnaturally pink and full. Her lips, nose and eyelids had been expertly reconstructed with mortician’s wax. Except for the variation in color, Will would’ve never guessed that an animal had ingested them. Make-up didn’t absorb into dead skin.

  Her hands were folded over her chest. The fingernails were long and curled. She had held onto a small, lace pouch for the last three years.

  Sara carefully removed the pouch. She shook the contents into her hand. Two wedding rings fell out, one a simple band, the other a large diamond.

  Will could see tears moisten Sara’s eyes. Her own wedding ring was with Jeffrey’s. She kept them both inside a small wooden box. When Will had first met her, the box had been out on the fireplace mantle. Now, it was on a shelf inside the guest room closet.

  Sara told Gary, “You’ll often find personal items with the deceased. Make sure you catalog and photograph them so they can be returned before burial.”

  Gary took the pouch and carefully laid it on the brown paper.

  “Let’s move her onto the table.” Sara dragged over a footstool.

  Gary found another one by the door.

  Will leaned against the wall. They didn’t need his help transferring the 115-pound body onto the gurney. Gary lifted her by the shoulders. Sara lifted the legs. Will saw Shay’s hand drop down as she was placed onto the gurney. He looked at her bare feet. The toenails were curved like a cat’s claw. He craned his neck, locating a pair of high heels inside a plastic bag that had been tucked inside the coffin.

  Sara said, “The waxy substance you’re seeing on the skin is adipocere. The anaerobic bacterial hydrolysis of fat develops during putrefaction, the fifth stage of death. It’s an urban legend that hair and nails continue to grow. The skin retracts, giving the nails a longer appearance. Embalming fluid can’t circulate into the follicles, so the hair loses its luster.”

  Gary moved the casket out from under the cameras and rolled the gurney in its place. He asked Sara, “Why aren’t her shoes on her feet?”

  “That’s not uncommon, especially with high heels. Sometimes, you’ll find underwear placed in a bag at the feet. If an autopsy has been performed, you might find a sealed bag containing organs.”

  Gary looked taken aback.

  “None of that is outside standard industry practices,” she told Gary. “Let’s get her undressed.”

  Will kept his back against the wall as they worked. Gary unbuttoned Shay’s blouse and laid it on the brown paper. The bra hooked in the front. The plastic clasp was broken. He carefully peeled it away. Cotton had been shoved into the cup where one of Shay’s breasts was missing. The material had stuck to the open wound. The arm fell away from the body. More cotton was packed into the armpit.

  Sara told Gary, “During embalming, cotton batting is used to pack the orifices and any open wounds. This keeps the fluid from leaking out.”

  Sara tugged down the skirt. There was no underwear. The thighs parted. Will saw more cotton packed between her legs, almost like a diaper. He could not help but think of Leslie Truong, Tommi Humphrey, Alexandra McAllister, and all of the other women from the spreadsheet.

  Sara gently turned Shay’s head. She rubbed her finger down the cervical vertebrae. Next, she looked at the armpits. She had to use the tweezers to strip away the cotton batting. From five feet away, Will could see nerves and veins sticking out of the woman’s armpit like a bunch of cables that had been ripped out of a computer.

  Sara used the magnifying glass to study the wound. She looked up at Will. She nodded. The puncture wound at C5. The cleanly sliced nerves at the brachial plexus.

  Shay Van Dorne was showing the same damage as Alexandra McAllister.

  While Sara called out the findings for the recording, Will took his phone out of his pocket. He kept it low, out of the camera frame. He texted Amanda a thumbs up. She tapped back an okay. He was about to return the phone to his pocket when he thought of Faith. She was hooked into Will’s location services. He saw that she had made good time. Faith was about twenty minutes out from Gerald Caterino’s subdivision.

  He considered sending her a text of encouragement, but a thumbs up felt wrong. Faith had already been forced to deal with Callie Zanger on her own. Will didn’t know how she would handle it if Gerald broke down again. The sound of the man’s sobs in the small closet had been agonizing. Will had been reminded of the new infants that would sometimes end up at the children’s home. They would cry for days until they figured out that no one was going to comfort them.

  He ended up texting her a yam emoji. Faith would understand.

  “Why?” Gary said.

  Will looked up.

  Sara was explaining, “We won’t find anything remarkable by opening her eyelids.”

  Will put away his phone. He knew that she meant remarkable in the literal sense. Because of animal damage, the sockets would be empty under the plastic eye caps that kept the shape of the lid. There was nothing to remark upon.

  Sara peeled away the wax that shaped Shay Van Dorne’s lips. The jaw stayed closed. Sara laid the wax on the brown paper. She pointed into the mouth, telling Gary, “See the four sets of wires attached to the top and bottom gingivae, or gums?”

  Gary said, “They look like bread bag ties.”

  “The embalmer used a needle injector to close the mouth. The device looks like a cross between a syringe and a pair of scissors, but think of it as operating like a small harpoon. The injector punches a pointed pin with a wire attached directly into the maxilla and mandible. You twist together the top and bottom wires to hold the mouth closed. I need the small wire cutters.”

  Gary pressed the pliers into Sara’s hand.

  She clipped open the wires. The mouth slacked open, falling down and to the side like the jaw was broken. Sara pressed her fingers along the bone. “The joint is dislocated.”

  Will could tell from her voice that she was troubled by the finding. He picked up the coroner’s report on the cart. The form was standard. He knew that the box labeled DESCRIPTION OF INJURIES – SUMMARY was on the third page. His finger followed the single line of text.

  Animal activity in sex organs, as detailed in drawing.

  Will studied the anatomical drawing. The breasts and pelvis were circled. The eyes and mouth had Xs on them. Nothing was marked in the area of the jaw. The Dougall County coroner was a dentist by training. The man would have noticed a dislocated jaw.

  Will looked back up.

  Sara was shining a light into the mouth. She dragged the footstool back over. From the higher vantage point, she could see directly into the back of the throat. She pressed down the jaw, opening the mouth as far as it would go. Then she used the magnifying glass to look inside.

  For the recording, she explained, “I’m looking at the upper right quadrant. A piece of latex or vinyl is lodged between the last molar and her wisdom tooth.”

  Gary had picked up on the change in demeanor. He asked, “Is that weird?”

  She talked around the question. “Wisdom teeth generally come in during your late teens or early twenties. Most of the time, they’re misaligned. They can crowd the other teeth and cause significant pain. They’re normally removed in pairs or all at once, so it’s remarkable that a thirty-five-year-old woman only has one wisdom tooth remaining.”

  Sara stepped down from the stool. The glance she gave Will told him something was terribly wrong. She spread out the photographs from the Dougall County coroner. She found what she was looking for. “The latex wasn’t there when the coroner took the mouth photos.”


  Gary said, “The embalmer would wear gloves, right? Because of disease?”

  “Yes.” She told Gary, “I need the forceps.”

  Sara returned to Shay’s body. She angled the overhead light. She stuck the long tweezers into Shay’s mouth. The latex stretched as she tried to pull it out. Then the jaw started to slip.

  “Steady the jaw,” she told Gary. “It’s really snagged in there.”

  Gary cupped his fingers on either side of the chin and forced open the mouth as wide as it would go.

  Sara tried again, pulling at the latex. The material was thin, almost translucent.

  Her phone started ringing. The sound was muffled in her back pocket.

  She turned to Will, frowning. “Could you get that? It could be—”

  Sara didn’t want to say Delilah Humphrey’s name on the recording.

  Will fished the phone out of her back pocket. He showed her the screen.

  Sara told Gary, “I’m going to take this in the hall.”

  Will followed her out of the room. She kept her gloved hands in the air. She couldn’t touch the phone.

  She told him, “You can hear this.”

  Will tapped the speaker icon on the screen, then held the phone close to her mouth.

  Sara said, “Mrs. Humphrey?”

  There was static. Will thought they’d let too many rings go by, but the timer was still counting up on the screen.

  Sara said, “Mrs. Humphrey, it’s Dr. Linton. Are you there?”

  More static, but a woman’s voice said, “What’s up, Doc?”

  Shock flashed in Sara’s eyes. “Tommi?”

  “You got her.” Tommi’s voice was deeper than Will had imagined. He had thought of the woman as timid, broken. The voice on the other end of the line was as hard as steel.

  Sara said, “I’m sorry to bother you.”

  “‘It’s possible you were right about the photo.’” Tommi was quoting Sara’s email. “I told you it wasn’t Daryl Nesbitt eight years ago.”

  Sara pressed together her lips. Will could tell she hadn’t gotten this far, that texting her own mother, emailing Delilah, had been the only steps she had walked herself through.

  “Tommi,” Sara said. “I need to know if you’ve remembered anything.”

  “What would I remember?” The steel turned into a razor. “Why would I remember?”

  “I know this is hard.”

  “Yeah, I know you know.”

  Sara nodded before Will could think about how to ask the question. She had told Tommi about her own rape.

  “Tommi—”

  Tommi interrupted her with a long, pained sigh. Will could imagine cigarette smoke coming out of her mouth.

  She told Sara, “I can’t have kids.”

  Sara’s eyes found Will’s again. She held onto his gaze. “I’m so sorry.”

  Will realized she was speaking to him.

  He shook his head. She didn’t ever need to apologize for that.

  Tommi said, “I wanted to be happy, you know? I looked at you, and I thought, ‘If Dr. Linton can be happy, then I can be happy.’”

  Sara didn’t insult her with platitudes. “It’s hard.”

  More silence. Will heard a lighter clicking. A mouth sucking in smoke, blowing it out.

  Tommi said, “I don’t know how to be with a man unless he’s hurting me.”

  The revelation came out in a rush. Will could see that Sara was doing the same thing he was doing—slowing it down, trying to find a way around the certainty in the woman’s voice.

  Sara slowly shook her head. She couldn’t find a way. She could only feel devastated.

  Tommi asked, “Are you that way, too?”

  Sara looked up at Will again. She said, “Sometimes.”

  Tommi blew out a long stream of smoke.

  She inhaled again.

  She said, “He told me it was my fault. That’s what I remember. That it was my fault.”

  Sara’s mouth opened. She took a breath. “Did he tell you why?”

  Tommi paused again to smoke, going through the deep inhale, the slow exhale. “He said that he saw me, and he wanted me, and he knew that I was too stuck up to give him the time of day, so he had to make me.”

  Sara said, “Tommi, you know it’s not your fault.”

  “Yeah, we need to stop asking rape victims what they did wrong and start asking men why they rape.”

  There was a sing-song quality to her voice, as if she’d heard the mantra in a self-help group.

  Sara said, “I know you can’t logic away that feeling. You’re always going to have moments when you blame yourself.”

  “Is that what you do?”

  “Sometimes,” Sara admitted. “But not all the time.”

  “All the time is my time,” Tommi said. “All the fucking time.”

  “Tommi—”

  “He cried,” she said. “That’s what I remember most. He cried like a fucking baby. Like, down on his knees, just wailing and rocking himself like a little kid.”

  Will felt the air leave his lungs. Sweat beaded up at the back of his neck.

  Just yesterday, he had seen a man cry that same way.

  On his knees. Rocking himself. Sobbing like a child.

  Will had been standing in Gerald Caterino’s murder closet. The father’s obsession with his daughter’s attack was splashed across the walls. Coroner’s reports. Newspaper articles. Police reports. Witness statements. DNA. A brush. A comb. A scrunchie. A headband. A hair clip. No one on earth knew as much about the attacks on Rebecca Caterino and Leslie Truong as Gerald Caterino.

  Acolyte? Copycat? Nutjob? Murderer?

  They had assumed Daryl Nesbitt had faked the DNA on the envelope.

  What if Gerald Caterino was the faker?

  Will struggled to reach for the phone in his pocket. Faith was probably pulling into Caterino’s driveway right now. He had to warn her.

  Sara knew something was wrong. She said, “Tommi—”

  “His mother was in the hospital.”

  “What?”

  Sara’s stunned question made Will freeze. She had almost shouted the word.

  Tommi said, “That’s why he did it. That was his reason. His mother was sick in the hospital. He was afraid that she was going to die. He needed somebody to comfort him.”

  “Tommi—”

  “I’m a real fucking comfort.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Hey, Sara, do me a favor. Lose this number. I can’t help you. I can’t even help myself.”

  The speaker clicked. She’d hung up.

  Will tapped his phone, pulling up Faith’s number. “I’ve got to—”

  “The latex,” Sara said. “Will, it’s not from a glove. It’s from a condom.”

  Grant County—Thursday—One Week Later

  27

  Jeffrey tried not to limp as he walked down Main Street. Exactly one full week had passed since the raid on Daryl Nesbitt’s house, and he wanted the town to see that their chief of police was all right. Or as all right as a man could be with a broken nose, a strained back and a wheeze in his lungs that sounded like a sick chihuahua.

  Rosario Lopez had never been in danger, and she hadn’t even technically been missing. The student had gone home with a boy she’d met in the cafeteria and, like a lot of students, they ended up spending the day in bed, eating take-out and talking about their childhoods. The manhunt through the woods, Jeffrey’s fear that she was being held captive in the shed, were both unfounded.

  He could torture himself with all the different ways he would’ve handled Daryl Nesbitt without the possible abduction of Rosario Lopez hanging over his head, but Jeffrey had learned a long time ago kicking yourself about the past would only trip you up in the future.

  Besides, there were bigger mistakes that he was losing sleep over.

  Rebecca Caterino was still in a coma. No one could say how much damage had been done to her brain. Everything was wait-and-see. Jeffrey kept telling himself that she would eventually recov
er. Beckey would never be able to walk again, but she would have a life. She could go back to school. She could graduate. The county’s insurance company was already negotiating a settlement with the girl’s father. The school was going to pay through the nose. Way down on that list was the fact that Jeffrey would keep his job.

  For now, at least.

  Bonita Truong had flown back to San Francisco with her daughter’s body. She had called Jeffrey twice since then. Each time, all he could do was listen to her cry. There was nothing anyone could say that would lessen her grief. As Cathy Linton was known to say, time was a tincture.

  Jeffrey yearned for that healing elixir. He wanted the clock to speed up so that he was on the other side of his own sorrow. He had left Birmingham to get away from these kinds of violent, heartbreaking cases. He had thought that Grant County would be his Valhalla, where the worst thing that would happen was a stolen bike or a frat boy wrapping his car around a tree.

  He told himself that nothing had changed. Daryl Nesbitt was an aberration. A once-in-a-lifetime psychopath. Jeffrey’s career from this point forward would be spent shaking hands at Rotary Club meetings and helping old ladies find their cats.

  He unwrapped a cough drop and flipped it into his mouth.

  Spring was making itself known from one end of Main Street to the other. Downtown still looked picture-perfect, despite the horrors that had unfolded in the woods last week. The leaves on the dogwoods waved frantically in the breeze. The flowers the garden club had planted were in full bloom. The gazebo display in front of the hardware store was being kept company by a wooden bench. The rack of clearance clothes had been picked clean outside the dress shop.

  Jeffrey coughed again.

  The smoke inhalation wasn’t the only reason his throat was hurting. He’d spent the last hour arguing with the district attorney and the mayor about the evidence against Daryl Nesbitt. The hammer. The proximity. The phone number.

  The shed.

  Jeffrey was filled with dread every time he thought about the homemade prison in Daryl Nesbitt’s back yard. The bars on the window and door had been installed with eight-inch, one-way screws. They’d had to drill them out to open the door. Inside, they’d found a cot with a pastel pink blanket. There was a bucket in the corner. A pink hairbrush and matching comb.