Faithless

by Karin Slaughter

  “Why?” Lena asked, her tone so odd that Sara turned to face her. She was staring at the X-ray as if it was the only thing in the room.

  “It’s no longer based on viability,” Sara explained, wondering why Lena was pressing the point. She had never struck Sara as the type who liked children, but Lena was getting older. Maybe her biological clock had finally started ticking.

  Lena nodded at the film, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. “Was this viable?”

  “Not even close,” Sara said, then felt the need to add, “I’ve read about fetuses being delivered and kept alive at twenty-three weeks, but it’s very unusual to—”

  “That’s the second trimester,” Lena interrupted.

  “Right.”

  “Twenty-three weeks?” Lena echoed. She swallowed visibly, and Sara exchanged a look with Jeffrey.

  He shrugged, then asked Lena, “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said, and it seemed as if she had to force herself to look away from the X-ray. “Yeah,” she repeated. “Let’s . . . uh . . . let’s just get this started.”

  Carlos helped Sara into the surgical gown, and together they went over every inch of the girl’s body, measuring and photographing what little they found. There were a few fingernail marks around her throat where she had probably scratched herself, a common reaction when someone was having difficulty breathing. Skin was missing from the tips of the index and middle finger of her right hand, and Sara imagined they would find the pieces stuck to the wooden slats that had been above her. Splinters were under her remaining fingernails where she had tried to scrape her way out, but Sara found no tissue or skin lodged under the nails.

  The girl’s mouth was clean of debris, the soft tissue free from tears and bruising. She had no fillings or dental work, but the beginning of a cavity was on her right rear molar. Her wisdom teeth were intact, two of them already breaking through the skin. A star-shaped birthmark was below the girl’s right buttock and a patch of dry skin was on her right forearm. She had been wearing a long-sleeved dress, so Sara assumed this was a bit of recurring eczema. Winter was always harder on the fair-skinned.

  Before Jeffrey took Polaroids for identification, Sara tried to press the girl’s lips together and close her eyes in order to soften her expression. When she had done all she could, she used a thin blade to scrape the mold from the girl’s upper lip. There wasn’t much, but she put it in a specimen jar to send to the lab anyway.

  Jeffrey leaned over the body, holding the camera close to her face. The flashbulb sparked, sending a loud pop through the room. Sara blinked to clear her vision, the smell of burning plastic from the cheap camera temporarily masking the other odors that filled the morgue.

  “One more,” Jeffrey said, leaning over the girl again. There was another pop and the camera whirred, spitting out a second photograph.

  Lena said, “She doesn’t look homeless.”

  “No,” Jeffrey agreed, his tone indicating he was anxious for answers. He waved the Polaroid in the air as if that would make it develop faster.

  “Let’s take prints,” Sara said, testing the tension in the girl’s raised arm.

  There was not as much resistance as Sara had expected, and her surprise must have been evident, because Jeffrey asked, “How long do you think she’s been dead?”

  Sara pressed down the arm to the girl’s side so that Carlos could ink and print her fingers. She said, “Full rigor would happen anywhere between six to twelve hours after death. From the way it’s breaking up, I’d say she’s been dead a day, two days, tops.” She indicated the lividity on the back of the body, pressing her fingers into the purplish marks. “Liver mortis is set up. She’s starting to decompose. It must’ve been cold in there. The body was well preserved.”

  “What about the mold around her mouth?”

  Sara looked at the card Carlos handed her, checking to make sure he had gotten a good set from what remained of the girl’s fingertips. She nodded to him, giving back the card, and told Jeffrey, “There are molds that can grow quickly, especially in that environment. She could have vomited and the mold set up on that.” Another thought occurred to her. “Some types of fungus can deplete oxygen in an enclosed space.”

  “There was stuff growing on the inside of the box,” Jeffrey recalled, looking at the picture of the girl. He showed it to Sara. “It’s not as bad as I thought.”

  Sara nodded, though she could not imagine what it would be like to have known the girl in life and see this picture of her now. Even with all Sara had tried to do to the face, there was no mistaking that the death had been an excruciating one.

  Jeffrey held the photo out for Lena to see, but she shook her head. He asked, “Do you think she’s been molested?”

  “We’ll do that next,” Sara said, realizing she had been postponing the inevitable.

  Carlos handed her the speculum and rolled over a portable lamp. Sara felt they were all holding their breath as she did the pelvic exam, and when she told them, “There’s no sign of sexual assault,” there seemed to be a group exhalation. She did not know why rape made cases like this that much more horrific, but there was no getting around the fact that she was relieved the girl hadn’t had to suffer one more degradation before she’d died.

  Next, Sara checked the eyes, noting the scattershot broken blood vessels. The girl’s lips were blue, her slightly protruding tongue a deep purple. “You don’t usually see petechiae in this kind of asphyxiation,” she said.

  Jeffrey asked, “You think something else could have killed her?”

  Sara answered truthfully, “I don’t know.”

  She used an eighteen-gauge needle to pierce the center of the eye, drawing out vitreous humor from the globe. Carlos filled another syringe with saline and she used this to replace what she had taken so that the orb would not collapse.

  When Sara had done all she could as far as the external exam, she asked, “Ready?”

  Jeffrey and Lena nodded. Sara pressed the pedal under the table, engaging the Dictaphone, and recorded into the tape, “Coroner’s case number eighty-four-seventy-two is the unembalmed body of a Caucasian Jane Doe with brown hair and brown eyes. Age is unknown but estimated to be eighteen to twenty years old. Weight, one thirteen; height, sixty-three inches. Skin is cool to the touch and consistent with being buried underground for an unspecified period of time.” She tapped off the recorder, telling Carlos, “We need the temperature for the last two weeks.”

  Carlos made a note on the board as Jeffrey asked, “Do you think she’s been out there longer than a week?”

  “It got down to freezing on Monday,” she reminded him. “There wasn’t much waste in the jar, but she could have been restricting her fluid intake in case she ran out. She was also probably dehydrated from shock.” She tapped on the Dictaphone and took up a scalpel, saying, “The internal exam is started with the standard Y incision.”

  The first time Sara had performed an autopsy, her hand had shaken. As a doctor, she had been trained to use a light touch. As a surgeon, she had been taught that every cut made into the body should be calculated and controlled; every movement of her hand working to heal, not harm. The initial cuts made at autopsy— slicing into the body as if it were a piece of raw meat— went against everything she had learned.

  She started the scalpel on the right side, anterior to the acromial process. She cut medial to the breasts, the tip of the blade sliding along the ribs, and stopped at the xiphoid process. She did the same on the left side, the skin folding away from the scalpel as she followed the midline down to the pubis and around the umbilicus, yellow abdominal fat rolling up in the sharp blade’s wake.

  Carlos passed Sara a pair of scissors, and she was using these to cut through the peritoneum when Lena gasped, putting her hand to her mouth.

  Sara asked, “Are you—” just as Lena bolted from the room, gagging.

  There was no bathroom in the morgue, and Sara assumed Lena was trying to make it upstairs to the hospital. Fr
om the retching noise that echoed in the stairwell, she hadn’t made it. Lena coughed several times and there was the distinct sound of splatter.

  Carlos murmured something under his breath and went to get the mop and bucket.

  Jeffrey had a sour look on his face. He had never been good around anyone being sick. “You think she’s okay?”

  Sara looked down at the body, wondering what had set Lena off. The detective had attended autopsies before and never had a bad reaction. The body hadn’t really been dissected yet; just a section of the abdominal viscera was exposed.

  Carlos said, “It’s the smell.”

  “What smell?” Sara asked, wondering if she had punctured the bowel.

  He furrowed his brow. “Like at the fair.”

  The door popped open and Lena came back into the room looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what—” She stopped about five feet from the table, her hand over her mouth as if she might be sick again. “Jesus, what is that?”

  Jeffrey shrugged. “I don’t smell anything.”

  “Carlos?” Sara asked.

  He said, “It’s . . . like something burning.”

  “No,” Lena countered, taking a step back. “Like it’s curdled. Like it makes your jaw ache to smell it.”

  Sara heard alarms go off in her head. “Does it smell bitter?” she asked. “Like bitter almonds?”

  “Yeah,” Lena allowed, still keeping her distance. “I guess.”

  Carlos was nodding, too, and Sara felt herself break out into a cold sweat.

  “Christ,” Jeffrey exhaled, taking a step away from the body.

  “We’ll have to finish this at the state lab,” Sara told him, throwing a sheet over the corpse. “I don’t even have a chemical hood here.”

  Jeffrey reminded her, “They’ve got an isolation chamber in Macon. I could call Nick and see if we can use it.”

  She snapped off her gloves. “It’d be closer, but they’d only let me observe.”

  “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “No,” Sara said, slipping on a surgical mask. She suppressed a shudder, thinking about what might have happened. Without prompting, Carlos came over with the body bag.

  “Careful,” Sara cautioned, handing him a mask. “We’re very lucky,” she told them, helping Carlos seal up the body. “Only about forty percent of the population can detect the odor.”

  Jeffrey told Lena, “It’s a good thing you came in today.”

  Lena looked from Sara to Jeffrey and back again. “What are you two talking about?”

  “Cyanide.” Sara zipped the bag closed. “That’s what you were smelling.” Lena still didn’t seem to be following, so Sara added, “She was poisoned.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jeffrey yawned so hard his jaw popped. He sat back in his chair, staring out at the squad room through his office window, trying to appear focused. Brad Stephens, the youngest patrolman on the Grant County force, gave him a goofy grin. Jeffrey nodded, feeling a shooting pain in his neck. He felt like he had slept on a slab of concrete, which was appropriate, as the only thing between him and the floor last night had been a sleeping bag that was so old and musty that Goodwill had politely refused to take it. They had, however, accepted his mattress, a couch that had seen better days and three boxes of kitchen stuff Jeffrey had fought Sara for during the divorce. Since he had not unpacked the boxes in the five years since the papers were signed, he figured it would be suicide to take them back to her place now.

  Clearing out his small house over the last few weeks, he had been startled by how little he had accumulated during his bachelorhood. Last night, as a substitute for counting sheep, he had made a mental list of new purchases. Except for ten boxes of books, some nice sheets that had been a gift from a woman he prayed to God Sara would never meet and some suits he had to buy for work over the years, Jeffrey had nothing new to show for the time they had lived apart. His bike, his lawn mower, his tools— except for a cordless drill that had been purchased when he accidentally dropped his old one into a five-gallon bucket of paint— had been in his possession that final day he’d left Sara’s house. And now, everything of value he ever owned had already been moved back.

  And he was sleeping on the floor.

  He took a swig of tepid coffee before returning to the task that had occupied the last thirty minutes of his morning. Jeffrey had never been one of those guys who thought reading directions somehow made you less of a man, but the fact that he had for the fourth time carefully followed every single step in the instruction sheet that came with the cell phone and still couldn’t program his own number into the speed dial made him feel like an idiot. He wasn’t even sure Sara would take the phone. She hated the damn things, but he didn’t want her traveling all the way to Macon without a way of getting in touch with him in case something happened.

  He mumbled under his breath, “Step one,” as if reading the directions out loud would convince the phone to see logic. Sixteen more steps went by for a fifth time, but when Jeffrey pressed the recall button, nothing happened.

  “Shit,” he said, pounding his fist into the desk, then “Fuck!” because he had used his injured left hand. He twisted his wrist, watching blood wick into the white bandage Sara had applied last night at the morgue. He threw in a “Jesus” for good measure, thinking the last ten minutes put a fine point on what was proving to be an extremely shitty day.

  As if he had been summoned, Brad Stephens stood at the office door. “Need help with that?”

  Jeffrey tossed him the phone. “Put my number on speed dial.”

  Brad pressed some buttons, asking, “Your cell number?”

  “Yeah,” he said, writing Cathy and Eddie Linton’s home number on a yellow Post-it. “This one, too.”

  “Okeydoke,” Brad said, reading the number upside down, punching more buttons.

  “You need the instructions?”

  Brad gave him a sideways look, like Jeffrey might be pulling his leg, and kept programming the phone. Suddenly, Jeffrey felt about six hundred years old.

  “Okay,” Brad said, staring at the phone, pressing more buttons. “Here. Try this.”

  Jeffrey hit the phone book icon and the numbers came up. “Thanks.”

  “If you don’t need anything else . . .”

  “That’s fine,” Jeffrey said, standing from his chair. He slipped on his suit jacket, pocketing the phone. “I guess there haven’t been any hits on the missing persons report we put out?”

  “No, sir,” Brad answered. “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear.”

  “I’ll be at the clinic, then back here.” Jeffrey followed Brad out of his office. He rolled his shoulder as he walked to the front of the squad room, trying to loosen up the muscles that were so tight his arm felt numb. The police station reception area had been open to the lobby at one time, but now it was walled in with a small banker’s window so visitors could check in. Marla Simms, the station’s secretary since before dirt, reached under her desk to buzz the door open for Jeffrey.

  “I’ll be at Sara’s office if you need me,” he told her.

  Marla gave him a cat’s grin. “You be good, now.”

  He gave her a wink before heading outside.

  Jeffrey had been at the station since five thirty that morning, having given up on sleep sometime around four. He usually ran for thirty minutes every weekday, but today he had fooled himself into thinking he wasn’t being lazy if he went straight to work instead. There was a mountain of paperwork to get through, including finalizing the station’s budget so the mayor could veto everything on it right before going to his annual two-week mayors’ conference in Miami. Jeffrey imagined the mayor’s minibar bill could pay for at least two Kevlar vests, but the politician never saw things that way.

  Heartsdale was a college town, and Jeffrey passed several students going to class as he walked down the sidewalk. Underclassmen had to live in the dorms, and the first thing any sophomore with half a brain did
was move off campus. Jeffrey had rented his house to a couple of juniors who he hoped were as trustworthy as they looked. Grant Tech was a school of eggheads, and while there weren’t nonacademic fraternities or football games, some of the kids knew how to party. Jeffrey had carefully screened prospective tenants, and he had been a cop long enough to know that there was no way in hell he would get his house back in one piece if he rented it to a bunch of young men. Something was wrong with your wiring at that age, and if it involved beer or sex— or both, if you were lucky— the brain ceased all higher levels of thinking. The two girls moving in had both listed reading as their only hobby. The way his luck was going lately, they were probably planning on turning the place into a meth lab.

  The college was at the mouth of Main Street, and Jeffrey walked toward the front gates behind a group of students. They were all girls, all young and pretty, all oblivious to his presence. There had been a time when Jeffrey’s ego would have been bothered by a bunch of young women ignoring him, but now he was concerned for other reasons. He could be stalking them, listening to their conversation to find out where they would be later on. He could be anybody.

  Behind him, a car horn beeped, and Jeffrey realized he had stepped into the street. He waved to the driver as he crossed the road, recognizing Bill Burgess from the dry cleaners, saying a small prayer of thanks that the old man had managed to see past his cataracts and stop the car in time.

  Jeffrey seldom remembered dreams, which was a gift considering how bad some of them could be, but last night he’d kept seeing the girl in the box. Sometimes, her face would change, and he would see instead the girl he had shot and killed a year ago. She had been just a child, little more than thirteen, with more bad stuff going on in her world than most adults experience in a lifetime. The teen had been desperate for someone to help her, threatening to kill another kid in the hopes that it would end her own suffering. Jeffrey had been forced to shoot her in order to save the other kid. Or maybe not. Maybe things could have been different. Maybe she wouldn’t have shot the kid. Maybe they would both be alive now and the girl in the box would just be another case instead of a nightmare.