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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.

Jeffrey sighed as he walked along the sidewalk. There were more maybe’s in his life than he knew what to do with.

Sara’s clinic was on the opposite side of the street from the station, right by the entrance to Grant Tech. He glanced at his watch as he opened the front door, thinking that at a little after seven she would already be in. The clinic didn’t see patients until eight on Mondays, but a young woman was already pacing the front waiting room, jiggling a crying baby as she walked the floor.

Jeffrey said, “Hey.”

“Hey, Chief,” the mother said, and he saw the dark circles under her eyes. The baby on her hip was at least two, with a set of lungs on him that rattled the windows.

She shifted the kid, lifting her leg for support. She probably weighed ninety pounds soaking wet, and Jeffrey wondered how she managed to hold on to the baby.

She saw him watching and told him, “Dr. Linton should be right out.”

Jeffrey said, “Thanks,” taking off his suit jacket. The east-facing side of the waiting room was built with glass brick, so even on the coldest winter morning the rising sun could make you feel like you were in a sauna.

“Hot in here,” the woman said, resuming her pacing.

“Sure is.”

Jeffrey waited for her to say more, but she was concentrating on the child, shushing him, trying to soothe his crying. How mothers managed to keep from falling over into a coma when they had small children was beyond Jeffrey. At times like this, he understood why his own mother had kept a flask in her purse at all times.

He leaned back against the wall, taking in the toys stacked neatly in the corner. There were at least three signs posted around the room that warned, “NO CELL PHONES ALLOWED.” Sara figured if a kid was sick enough to go to the doctor, the parents should be paying attention, not yakking on the phone. He smiled, thinking of the first and only time Sara had carried a phone in her car. Somehow, she kept accidentally hitting the speed dial, so that Jeffrey would answer his phone and hear her singing along to the radio for minutes at a time. It had taken three calls before he figured out he was hearing Sara trying to harmonize with Boy George and not some sick freak beating up a cat.

Sara opened the door beside the office and went to the mother. She didn’t notice Jeffrey, and he kept quiet, taking her in. Normally, she pulled her long auburn hair back into a ponytail while she worked, but this morning it was loose around her shoulders. She was wearing a white button-down shirt and a black A-line skirt that hit just below the knee. The heel on her shoe wasn’t high, but it did something nice to her calf that made him smile. In the outfit, anyone else would look like a waitress from an uptown steakhouse, but on Sara’s tall, slim frame, it worked.

The mother shifted the baby, saying, “He’s still fussy.”

Sara put her hand to the boy’s cheek, shushing him. The child calmed as if a spell had been cast, and Jeffrey felt a lump rising in his throat. Sara was so good with children. The fact that she couldn’t have any of her own was something they seldom talked about. There were some things that just cut too close.

Jeffrey watched as Sara took a few more seconds with the baby, stroking his thin hair over his ear, a smile of sheer pleasure on her lips. The moment felt private, and Jeffrey cleared his throat, having the strange sensation of being an intruder.

Sara turned around, taken off guard, almost startled. She told Jeffrey, “Just a minute,” then turned back to the mother, all business as she handed the woman a white paper bag. “These samples should be enough for a week. If he’s not significantly better by Thursday, give me a call.”

The woman took the samples with one hand, holding tight to the baby. She had probably had the kid while she was just a teenager. Jeffrey had learned just recently that before going off to college he had fathered a child. Well, not a child anymore— Jared was nearly a grown man.

“Thank you, Dr. Linton,” the young mother said. “I don’t know how I’m gonna pay you for—”

“Let’s just get him better,” Sara interrupted. “And get some sleep yourself. You’re no good to him if you’re exhausted all the time.”

The mother took the admonishment with a slight nod of the head, and without even knowing her, Jeffrey understood the advice was falling on deaf ears.

Sara obviously knew this, too well. She said, “Just try, okay? You’re going to make yourself sick.”

The woman hesitated, then agreed, “I’ll try.”

Sara looked down at her hand, and it seemed to Jeffrey that she had not realized she was holding the baby’s foot in her palm. Her thumb rubbed his ankle, and she gave that private smile again.

“Thank you,” the mother said. “Thank you for coming in so early.”

“It’s fine.” Sara had never been good at taking praise or appreciation. She walked them to the door, holding it open as she reminded, “Call me if he’s not better.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Sara pulled the door shut after them, taking her time as she walked back across the lobby, not looking at Jeffrey. He opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it, asking, “Anything on the Jane Doe?”

“No,” he said. “We might get something later on when the West Coast opens for the day.”

“She doesn’t look like a runaway to me.”

“Me, either.”

They were both quiet for a beat, and Jeffrey didn’t know what to say.

As usual, Sara broke the silence. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, walking back toward the exam rooms. He followed her, thinking he was hearing good news until she said, “I want to draw some blood for a hep and liver panel.”

“Hare already did all that.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, leaving it at that. She didn’t hold the door for him, and he had to catch it before it popped back in his face. Unfortunately, he used his left hand and the hard surface caught him smack on the bandaged cut. He felt like someone had stuck him with a knife.

He hissed, “Jesus, Sara.”

“I’m sorry.” Her apology seemed genuine, but there was a flash of something like revenge in her eyes. She reached for his hand and he pulled back on sheer reflex. Her look of irritation at this persuaded him to let her see the bandage.

She asked, “How long has it been bleeding?”

“It’s not bleeding,” he insisted, knowing she’d probably do something really painful to it if he told her the truth. Still, he followed her down the hall toward the nurses’ station like a lamb to the slaughter.

“You didn’t get that prescription filled, did you?” She leaned over the counter and riffled through a drawer, grabbing a handful of brightly colored packets. “Take these.”

He looked at the pink and green sample packs. There were farm animals printed on the foil. “What are these?”

“Antibiotics.”

“Aren’t they for kids?”

Her look said she wasn’t going to go for the obvious joke. “It’s half the dose of the adult formula with a movie tie-in and a higher price,” she told him. “Take two in the morning and two at night.”

“For how long?”

“Until I tell you to stop,” she ordered. “Come in here.”

Jeffrey followed her into an exam room, feeling like a child. His mother had worked in the hospital cafeteria when Jeffrey was a kid, so he had missed out on going to a pediatrician’s office for various bumps and scrapes. Cal Rodgers, the ER doc, had taken care of him and, Jeffrey suspected, had taken care of his mother as well. The first time he had heard his mother giggle was when Rodgers had told a stupid joke about a paraplegic and a nun.

“Sit,” Sara ordered, cupping his elbow as if he needed help getting up on the exam table.

“I’ve got it,” Jeffrey told her, but she was already unwrapping his hand. The wound gaped open like a wet mouth, and he felt a throbbing ache pulse up his arm.

“You broke it open,” she admonished, holding a silver basin under his hand as she washed out the wound.

Jeffrey tried not to react to the pain, but the truth was it hurt like hell. He never understood why an injury hurt more during treatment than it did when you first got it. He could barely remember cutting his hand in the woods, but now, every time he moved his fingers, he felt like a bunch of needles were digging into his skin.

“What did you do?” she asked, her tone full of disapproval.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he thought about the way Sara had smiled with that baby. He had seen Sara in a lot of moods, but he had never seen that particular smile.

“Jeff?” she prompted.

He shook his head, wanting to touch her face but afraid he’d pull back a bloody stub where his hand used to be.

“I’ll wrap it again,” she said, “but you need to be careful with this. You don’t want an infection.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, waiting for her to look up and smile.

Instead, she asked, “Where did you sleep last night?”

“Not where I wanted to.”

She didn’t take the bait, rather she began wrapping his hand again, her lips pressed together in a tight line. She used her teeth to cut through a strip of surgical tape. “You need to be very careful and keep this clean.”

“Why don’t I drop by later and you can do it?”

“Right . . .” She let her voice trail off as she opened and closed some drawers. She took out a vacuum tube and a syringe. Jeffrey felt a moment of panic that she was going to stick a needle in his hand but then remembered she wanted to draw blood.

She unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt and rolled up the sleeve. He looked up at the ceiling, not wanting to watch, waiting for the sharp sting of the needle. It didn’t come— instead he heard her give a heavy sigh.

He asked, “What?”

She tapped his forearm to find a vein. “It’s my fault.”

“What’s your fault?”

She waited before answering, as if she needed to think about how to phrase her response. “When I left Atlanta, I was in the middle of my vaccinations for hep A and B.” She wrapped a tourniquet around his biceps, pulling it tight. “You get two injections a few weeks apart, then five months later you get the booster.” She paused again, wiping his skin with alcohol. “I got one and two, but when I moved back here, I didn’t follow up. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life, let alone whether or not I was going to keep practicing medicine.” She paused. “I didn’t think to finish the series again until around the time . . .”

“Around what time?”

She used her teeth to uncap the syringe, saying, “The divorce.”

“Well, that’s good, then,” Jeffrey said, trying not to jump off the table as she slid the needle into his vein. She was being gentle, but Jeffrey hated shots. Sometimes just thinking about them could make him woozy.

“These are baby needles,” she told him, more out of sarcasm than consideration. “Why is it good?”

“Because I only slept with her once,” he said. “You kicked me out the next day.”

“Right.” Sara hooked up the vacuum tube and released the tourniquet.

“So, you were finished with the vaccinations by the time we started seeing each other again. You should be immune.”

“You’ve forgotten that one time.”

“What one—” He stopped, remembering. The night before the divorce was finalized, Sara had shown up on his doorstep drunk as a mop and in a receptive mood. Desperate to have her back, Jeffrey had taken advantage of the situation, only to have her sneak out of the house before the sun came up the next morning. She hadn’t returned his calls the next day and when he had shown up at her house that night, she had slammed the door in his face.

“I was in the middle of the series,” she told him. “I hadn’t had the booster.”

“But you had the first two?”

“It’s still a risk.” She slid out the needle and topped it. “And there’s no vaccination for hepatitis C.” She put a cotton ball on his arm and made him bend his elbow to hold it in place. When she looked up at him, he could tell he was about to get a lecture.

“There are five major types of hepatitis, some with different strains,” she began, dropping the syringe into the red biohazard box. “A is basically like a bad flu. It lasts a couple of weeks, and once you have it, you develop antibodies. You can’t get it again.”

“Right.” That was the one detail he remembered from his visit to Hare’s office. The rest was pretty much a blur. He had tried to listen— really tried— as Sara’s cousin explained the differences, the risk factors, but all he could really focus on was how to get out of the office as fast as he could. After a sleepless night, he had formed several questions, but couldn’t force himself to call Hare to ask them. In the ensuing days, he had found himself swinging back and forth between denial and cold panic. Jeffrey could remember every detail of a case from fifteen years ago, but couldn’t recall a damn thing about what Hare had said.

Sara continued, “Hep B is different. It can come and go, or it can be chronic. About ten percent of the people who are infected with it become carriers. The risk of infecting another person is one in three. AIDS has a risk of about one in three hundred.”

Jeffrey certainly didn’t have Sara’s mathematical abilities, but he could calculate the odds. “You and I have had sex more than three times since Jo.”

She tried to hide it, but he saw her flinch at the name. “It’s hit-or-miss, Jeffrey.”

“I wasn’t saying—”

“Hep C is generally passed through blood contact. You could have it and not even know it. You usually don’t find out until you start showing symptoms, then it can go downhill from there. Liver fibrosis. Cirrhosis. Cancer.”

All he could do was stare at her. He knew where this was going. It was like a train wreck and there was nothing he could do but hang on and wait for the wheels to skid off the rails.

“I’m so angry at you,” she said, the most obvious statement that had ever come from her lips. “I’m angry because it’s bringing all this up again.” She paused as if to calm herself. “I wanted to forget it happened, to start over, and this just throws it back into my face.” She blinked, her eyes watering. “And if you’re sick . . .”

Jeffrey focused on what he thought he could control. “It’s my fault, Sara. I fucked up. I’m the one who ruined things. I know that.” He had learned a long time ago not to add the “but,” though in his head he went through it. Sara had been distant, spending more time at work and with her family than with Jeffrey. He wasn’t the kind of husband who expected dinner on the table every night, but he had thought she would at least make some time for him out of her busy schedule.

Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Did you do things with her that you do with me?”

“Sara—”

“Were you unsafe?”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“You know what it means,” she told him. It was her turn to stare, and he had one of those rare moments when he could read her mind.

“Jesus,” he muttered, wishing like hell he was anywhere but here. It wasn’t like they were a couple of perverts, but it was one thing to explore certain acts while you were in bed, quite another to analyze them in the cold light of day.

“If you had a cut in your mouth and she was . . .” Sara obviously couldn’t finish. “Even with normal intercourse, people can get tears, microscopic injuries.”

“I get what you’re saying,” he told her, his tone sharp enough to stop her.

Sara picked up the tube of his blood and labeled it with a ballpoint pen. “I’m not asking this because I want the gory details.”

He didn’t call her out on the lie. She had drilled him before when it happened, asking him pointed questions about every move he made, every kiss, every act, as if she had some sort of voyeuristic obsession.

She stood, opening a drawer and taking out a bright pink Barbie Band-Aid. He had kept his elbow bent the entire time, and his arm felt numb when she straightened it. Peeling back the edges, she pressed the Band-Aid down over the cotton. She didn’t speak again until she had thrown the strips into the trash.

“Aren’t you going to tell me I need to get over it?” She feigned a dismissive shrug. “It was only once, right? It’s not like it meant anything.”

Jeffrey bit his tongue, recognizing the trap. The good thing about beating this dead horse for the last five years was he knew when to shut up. Still, he struggled not to argue with her. She didn’t want to see his side of things, and maybe she had a point, but that didn’t take away the fact that there were reasons he did what he did, and not all of them had to do with him being a total bastard. He knew his part in this was to play the supplicant. Being whipped was a small price to pay for peace.

Sara prompted, “You usually say that I need to get over it. That it was a long time ago, that you’re different, that you’ve changed. That she didn’t matter to you.”

“If I say that now, will it make any difference?”

“No,” Sara said. “I don’t suppose anything will.”

Jeffrey leaned back against the wall, wishing he could read her mind now. “Where do we go from here?”

“I want to hate you.”

“That’s nothing new,” he said, but she didn’t seem to catch the levity in his voice, because she nodded in agreement.

Jeffrey shifted on the table, feeling like an idiot with his legs dangling two feet above the floor. He heard Sara whisper, “Fuck,” and his head snapped up in surprise. She seldom cursed, and he did not know whether to take the expletive as a good or bad sign.

“You irritate the hell out of me, Jeffrey.”

“I thought you found that endearing.”

She gave him a cutting look. “If you ever . . .” She let her voice trail off. “What’s the use?” she asked, but he could tell it wasn’t a rhetorical question.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, and he really meant it this time. “I’m sorry I brought this on us. I’m sorry I screwed things up. I’m sorry we had to go through that hell— that you had to go through that hell— to get us here.”

“Where’s here?”

“I guess that’s up to you.”

She sniffed, covering her face with her hands, letting out a long breath of air. When she looked back up at him, he could tell she wanted to cry but wouldn’t let herself.

Jeffrey stared down at his hand, picking at the tape on the bandage.

“Don’t mess with that,” she told him, putting her hand over his. She left it there, and he could feel her warmth penetrating through the bandage. He looked at her long, graceful fingers, the blue veins on the back of her hand making an intricate map underneath her pale white skin. He traced his fingers along hers, wondering how in the world he had ever been stupid enough to take her for granted.

“I kept thinking about that girl,” he said. “She looks a lot like—”

“Wendy,” she finished. Wendy was the name of the little girl he’d shot and killed.

He laid his other hand flat over hers, wanting to talk about anything but the shooting. “What time are you going to Macon?”

She looked at his watch. “Carlos is going to meet me at the morgue in half an hour.”

“It’s weird they could both smell the cyanide,” Jeffrey said. “Lena’s grandmother was from Mexico. Carlos is Mexican. Is there some connection?”

“Not that I know of.” She was watching him carefully, reading him like a book.

He slid down off the table, saying, “I’m okay.”

“I know.” She asked, “What about the baby?”

“There has to be a father out there somewhere.” Jeffrey knew that if they ever found the man, they would be taking a hard look at him for the murder.

Sara pointed out, “A pregnant woman is more likely to die as a result of homicide than any other factor.” She went to the sink to wash her hands, a troubled look on her face.

He said, “Cyanide isn’t just lying around on the shelves at the grocery store. Where would I get it if I wanted to kill somebody?”

“Some over-the-counter products have it.” She turned off the sink and dried her hands with a paper towel. “There have been several pediatric fatalities involving nail glue removers.”

“That has cyanide in it?”

“Yes,” Sara answered, tossing the towel into the trash. “I checked it out in a couple of books when I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“And?”

She rested her hand on the exam table. “Natural sources are found in most fruits with pits— peaches, apricots, cherries. You’d need a lot of them, so it’s not very practical. Different industries use cyanide, some medical labs.”

“What kinds of industries?” he asked. “Do you think the college might have some?”

“It’s likely,” she told him, and he made a note to find out for himself. Grant Tech was primarily an agricultural school, and they performed all sorts of experiments at the behest of the large chemical companies who were looking for the next big thing to make tomatoes grow faster or peas grow greener.

Sara provided, “It’s also a case hardener in metal plating. Some laboratories keep it around for controls. Sometimes it’s used for fumigation. It’s in cigarette smoke. Hydrogen cyanide is created by burning wool or various types of plastics.”

“It’d be pretty hard to direct smoke down a pipe.”

“He’d have to wear a mask, too, but you’re right. There are better ways to do it.”

“Like?”

“It needs an acid to activate. Mix cyanide salts with a household vinegar, and you could kill an elephant.”

“Isn’t that what Hitler used in the camps? Salts?”

“I think so,” she said, rubbing her arms with her hands.

“If a gas was used,” Jeffrey thought out loud, “then we would’ve been in danger when we opened the box.”

“It could’ve dissipated. Or been absorbed into the wood and soil.”

“Could she have gotten the cyanide through ground contamination?”

“That’s a pretty active state park. Joggers go through there all the time. I doubt anyone could’ve sneaked in a bunch of toxic waste without someone noticing and making a fuss.”

“Still?”

“Still,” she agreed. “Someone had time to bury her there. Anything’s possible.”

“How would you do it?”

Sara thought it through. “I would mix the salts in water,” she said. “Pour it down the pipe. She would obviously have her mouth close by so that she could get air. As soon as the salts hit her stomach, the acid would activate the poison. She would be dead in minutes.”

“There’s a metal plater on the edge of town,” Jeffrey said. “He does gold leafing, that sort of thing.”

Sara supplied, “Dale Stanley.”

“Pat Stanley’s brother?” Jeffrey asked. Pat was one of his best patrolmen.

“That was his wife you saw coming in.”

“What’s wrong with her kid?”

“Bacterial infection. Their oldest came in about three months ago with the worst asthma I’ve seen in a long time. He’s been in and out of the hospital with it.”

“She looked pretty sick herself.”

“I don’t see how she’s holding up,” Sara admitted. “She won’t let me treat her.”

“You think something’s wrong with her?”

“I think she’s ready for a nervous breakdown.”

Jeffrey let this sink in. “I guess I should pay them a visit.”

“It’s a horrible death, Jeffrey. Cyanide is a chemical asphyxiant. It takes all of the oxygen from the blood until there’s nothing left. She knew what was happening. Her heart must have been pumping ninety miles an hour.” Sara shook her head, as if she wanted to clear the image away.

“How long do you think it took her to die?”

“It depends on how she ingested the poison, what form was administered. Anywhere from two to five minutes. I have to think it was fairly quick. She doesn’t show any of the classic signs of prolonged cyanide poisoning.”

“Which are?”

“Severe diarrhea, vomiting, seizures, syncope. Basically, the body does everything it can to get rid of the poison as quickly as possible.”

“Can it? On its own, I mean.”

“Usually not. It’s extremely toxic. There are about ten different things you can try in the ER, from charcoal to amyl nitrate— poppers— but really, all you can do is treat symptoms as they occur and hope for the best. It’s incredibly fast-acting and almost always fatal.”

Jeffrey had to ask, “But you think it happened fast?”

“I hope so.”

“I want you to take this,” he said, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out the cell phone.

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t want that thing.”

“I like knowing where you are.”

“You know where I’m going to be,” she told him. “With Carlos, then in Macon, then back here.”

“What if they find something during the autopsy?”

“Then I’ll pick up one of the ten telephones at the lab and call you.”

“What if I forget the words to ‘Karma Chameleon’?”

She gave him a nasty look, and he laughed. “I love it when you sing to me.”

“That’s not why I don’t want it.”

He put the phone beside her on the table. “I guess asking you to do it for my sake wouldn’t change your mind?”

She stared at him for a second, then walked out of the exam room. He was still wondering if he was expected to follow her when she returned with a book in her hand.

She said, “I don’t know whether to throw this at your head or give it to you.”

“What is it?”

“I ordered it a few months ago,” she told him. “It came last week. I was going to give it to you when you finally moved in.” She held it up so he could read the title on the maroon slipcase. “Kantor’s Andersonville,” she said, adding, “It’s a first edition.”

He stared at the book, his mouth opening and closing a few times before words would come out. “It must have cost a fortune.”

She gave him a wry look as she handed him the novel. “I thought you were worth it at the time.”

He slid the book out of the paper case, feeling like he was holding the Holy Grail. The buckram was blue and white, the pages slightly faded at the edges. Carefully, he opened it to the title page. “It’s signed. MacKinlay Kantor signed it.”

She half shrugged, acting as if it wasn’t a big deal. “I know you like the book, and . . .”

“I can’t believe you did this,” Jeffrey managed, feeling like he couldn’t swallow. “I can’t believe it.”

When he was a kid, Miss Fleming, one of his English teachers, had given him the book to read during after-school detention. Jeffrey had been a general fuckup until then, pretty much resigned to the fact that his career choices were limited to mechanic or factory worker or worse, a petty thief like his old man, but the story had opened something up inside him, something that wanted to learn. The book had changed his life.

A psychiatrist would probably say there was a connection between Jeffrey’s fascination with one of the Confederacy’s most notorious Civil War prisons and his being a cop, but Jeffrey liked to think that what Andersonville gave him was a sense of empathy that he’d lacked until that point. Before Jeffrey had moved to Grant County and taken the job as police chief, he had gone to Sumter County, Georgia, to see the place for himself. He could still remember the chill he got standing just inside the stockade at Fort Sumter. Over thirteen thousand prisoners had died in the four years the prison was open. He had stood there until the sun went down and there was nothing more to see.

Sara asked, “Do you like it?”

All he could say was, “It’s beautiful.” He ran his thumb along the gilt spine. Kantor had gotten the Pulitzer for this book. Jeffrey had gotten a life.

“Anyway,” Sara said. “I thought you’d like it.”

“I do.” He tried to think of something profound to tell her that would help convey his gratitude, but instead found himself asking, “Why are you giving it to me now?”

“Because you should have it.”

He was only half-kidding when he asked, “As a going-away present?”

She licked her lips, taking her time responding. “Just because you should have it.”

From the front of the building, a man’s voice called, “Chief?”

“Brad,” Sara said. She stepped into the hall, answering, “Back here,” before Jeffrey could say anything else.

Brad opened the door, his hat in one hand, a cell phone in the other. He told Jeffrey, “You left your phone at the station.”

Jeffrey let his irritation show. “You came all the way over here to tell me that?”

“N-no, sir,” he stammered. “I mean, yes, sir, but also, we just got a call in.” He paused for a breath. “Missing person. Twenty-one years old, brown hair, brown eyes. Last seen ten days ago.”

He heard Sara whisper, “Bingo.”

Jeffrey grabbed his coat and the book. He handed the cell phone to Sara, saying, “Call me as soon as you know something on the autopsy.” Before she could object, he asked Brad, “Where’s Lena?”

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.

Jeffrey sighed as he walked along the sidewalk. There were more maybe’s in his life than he knew what to do with.

Sara’s clinic was on the opposite side of the street from the station, right by the entrance to Grant Tech. He glanced at his watch as he opened the front door, thinking that at a little after seven she would already be in. The clinic didn’t see patients until eight on Mondays, but a young woman was already pacing the front waiting room, jiggling a crying baby as she walked the floor.

Jeffrey said, “Hey.”

“Hey, Chief,” the mother said, and he saw the dark circles under her eyes. The baby on her hip was at least two, with a set of lungs on him that rattled the windows.

She shifted the kid, lifting her leg for support. She probably weighed ninety pounds soaking wet, and Jeffrey wondered how she managed to hold on to the baby.

She saw him watching and told him, “Dr. Linton should be right out.”

Jeffrey said, “Thanks,” taking off his suit jacket. The east-facing side of the waiting room was built with glass brick, so even on the coldest winter morning the rising sun could make you feel like you were in a sauna.

“Hot in here,” the woman said, resuming her pacing.

“Sure is.”

Jeffrey waited for her to say more, but she was concentrating on the child, shushing him, trying to soothe his crying. How mothers managed to keep from falling over into a coma when they had small children was beyond Jeffrey. At times like this, he understood why his own mother had kept a flask in her purse at all times.

He leaned back against the wall, taking in the toys stacked neatly in the corner. There were at least three signs posted around the room that warned, “NO CELL PHONES ALLOWED.” Sara figured if a kid was sick enough to go to the doctor, the parents should be paying attention, not yakking on the phone. He smiled, thinking of the first and only time Sara had carried a phone in her car. Somehow, she kept accidentally hitting the speed dial, so that Jeffrey would answer his phone and hear her singing along to the radio for minutes at a time. It had taken three calls before he figured out he was hearing Sara trying to harmonize with Boy George and not some sick freak beating up a cat.

Sara opened the door beside the office and went to the mother. She didn’t notice Jeffrey, and he kept quiet, taking her in. Normally, she pulled her long auburn hair back into a ponytail while she worked, but this morning it was loose around her shoulders. She was wearing a white button-down shirt and a black A-line skirt that hit just below the knee. The heel on her shoe wasn’t high, but it did something nice to her calf that made him smile. In the outfit, anyone else would look like a waitress from an uptown steakhouse, but on Sara’s tall, slim frame, it worked.

The mother shifted the baby, saying, “He’s still fussy.”

Sara put her hand to the boy’s cheek, shushing him. The child calmed as if a spell had been cast, and Jeffrey felt a lump rising in his throat. Sara was so good with children. The fact that she couldn’t have any of her own was something they seldom talked about. There were some things that just cut too close.

Jeffrey watched as Sara took a few more seconds with the baby, stroking his thin hair over his ear, a smile of sheer pleasure on her lips. The moment felt private, and Jeffrey cleared his throat, having the strange sensation of being an intruder.

Sara turned around, taken off guard, almost startled. She told Jeffrey, “Just a minute,” then turned back to the mother, all business as she handed the woman a white paper bag. “These samples should be enough for a week. If he’s not significantly better by Thursday, give me a call.”

The woman took the samples with one hand, holding tight to the baby. She had probably had the kid while she was just a teenager. Jeffrey had learned just recently that before going off to college he had fathered a child. Well, not a child anymore— Jared was nearly a grown man.

“Thank you, Dr. Linton,” the young mother said. “I don’t know how I’m gonna pay you for—”

“Let’s just get him better,” Sara interrupted. “And get some sleep yourself. You’re no good to him if you’re exhausted all the time.”

The mother took the admonishment with a slight nod of the head, and without even knowing her, Jeffrey understood the advice was falling on deaf ears.

Sara obviously knew this, too well. She said, “Just try, okay? You’re going to make yourself sick.”

The woman hesitated, then agreed, “I’ll try.”

Sara looked down at her hand, and it seemed to Jeffrey that she had not realized she was holding the baby’s foot in her palm. Her thumb rubbed his ankle, and she gave that private smile again.

“Thank you,” the mother said. “Thank you for coming in so early.”

“It’s fine.” Sara had never been good at taking praise or appreciation. She walked them to the door, holding it open as she reminded, “Call me if he’s not better.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Sara pulled the door shut after them, taking her time as she walked back across the lobby, not looking at Jeffrey. He opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it, asking, “Anything on the Jane Doe?”

“No,” he said. “We might get something later on when the West Coast opens for the day.”

“She doesn’t look like a runaway to me.”

“Me, either.”

They were both quiet for a beat, and Jeffrey didn’t know what to say.

As usual, Sara broke the silence. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, walking back toward the exam rooms. He followed her, thinking he was hearing good news until she said, “I want to draw some blood for a hep and liver panel.”

“Hare already did all that.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, leaving it at that. She didn’t hold the door for him, and he had to catch it before it popped back in his face. Unfortunately, he used his left hand and the hard surface caught him smack on the bandaged cut. He felt like someone had stuck him with a knife.

He hissed, “Jesus, Sara.”

“I’m sorry.” Her apology seemed genuine, but there was a flash of something like revenge in her eyes. She reached for his hand and he pulled back on sheer reflex. Her look of irritation at this persuaded him to let her see the bandage.

She asked, “How long has it been bleeding?”

“It’s not bleeding,” he insisted, knowing she’d probably do something really painful to it if he told her the truth. Still, he followed her down the hall toward the nurses’ station like a lamb to the slaughter.

“You didn’t get that prescription filled, did you?” She leaned over the counter and riffled through a drawer, grabbing a handful of brightly colored packets. “Take these.”

He looked at the pink and green sample packs. There were farm animals printed on the foil. “What are these?”

“Antibiotics.”

“Aren’t they for kids?”

Her look said she wasn’t going to go for the obvious joke. “It’s half the dose of the adult formula with a movie tie-in and a higher price,” she told him. “Take two in the morning and two at night.”

“For how long?”

“Until I tell you to stop,” she ordered. “Come in here.”

Jeffrey followed her into an exam room, feeling like a child. His mother had worked in the hospital cafeteria when Jeffrey was a kid, so he had missed out on going to a pediatrician’s office for various bumps and scrapes. Cal Rodgers, the ER doc, had taken care of him and, Jeffrey suspected, had taken care of his mother as well. The first time he had heard his mother giggle was when Rodgers had told a stupid joke about a paraplegic and a nun.

“Sit,” Sara ordered, cupping his elbow as if he needed help getting up on the exam table.

“I’ve got it,” Jeffrey told her, but she was already unwrapping his hand. The wound gaped open like a wet mouth, and he felt a throbbing ache pulse up his arm.

“You broke it open,” she admonished, holding a silver basin under his hand as she washed out the wound.

Jeffrey tried not to react to the pain, but the truth was it hurt like hell. He never understood why an injury hurt more during treatment than it did when you first got it. He could barely remember cutting his hand in the woods, but now, every time he moved his fingers, he felt like a bunch of needles were digging into his skin.

“What did you do?” she asked, her tone full of disapproval.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he thought about the way Sara had smiled with that baby. He had seen Sara in a lot of moods, but he had never seen that particular smile.

“Jeff?” she prompted.

He shook his head, wanting to touch her face but afraid he’d pull back a bloody stub where his hand used to be.

“I’ll wrap it again,” she said, “but you need to be careful with this. You don’t want an infection.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, waiting for her to look up and smile.

Instead, she asked, “Where did you sleep last night?”

“Not where I wanted to.”

She didn’t take the bait, rather she began wrapping his hand again, her lips pressed together in a tight line. She used her teeth to cut through a strip of surgical tape. “You need to be very careful and keep this clean.”

“Why don’t I drop by later and you can do it?”

“Right . . .” She let her voice trail off as she opened and closed some drawers. She took out a vacuum tube and a syringe. Jeffrey felt a moment of panic that she was going to stick a needle in his hand but then remembered she wanted to draw blood.

She unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt and rolled up the sleeve. He looked up at the ceiling, not wanting to watch, waiting for the sharp sting of the needle. It didn’t come— instead he heard her give a heavy sigh.

He asked, “What?”

She tapped his forearm to find a vein. “It’s my fault.”

“What’s your fault?”

She waited before answering, as if she needed to think about how to phrase her response. “When I left Atlanta, I was in the middle of my vaccinations for hep A and B.” She wrapped a tourniquet around his biceps, pulling it tight. “You get two injections a few weeks apart, then five months later you get the booster.” She paused again, wiping his skin with alcohol. “I got one and two, but when I moved back here, I didn’t follow up. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life, let alone whether or not I was going to keep practicing medicine.” She paused. “I didn’t think to finish the series again until around the time . . .”

“Around what time?”

She used her teeth to uncap the syringe, saying, “The divorce.”

“Well, that’s good, then,” Jeffrey said, trying not to jump off the table as she slid the needle into his vein. She was being gentle, but Jeffrey hated shots. Sometimes just thinking about them could make him woozy.

“These are baby needles,” she told him, more out of sarcasm than consideration. “Why is it good?”

“Because I only slept with her once,” he said. “You kicked me out the next day.”

“Right.” Sara hooked up the vacuum tube and released the tourniquet.

“So, you were finished with the vaccinations by the time we started seeing each other again. You should be immune.”

“You’ve forgotten that one time.”

“What one—” He stopped, remembering. The night before the divorce was finalized, Sara had shown up on his doorstep drunk as a mop and in a receptive mood. Desperate to have her back, Jeffrey had taken advantage of the situation, only to have her sneak out of the house before the sun came up the next morning. She hadn’t returned his calls the next day and when he had shown up at her house that night, she had slammed the door in his face.

“I was in the middle of the series,” she told him. “I hadn’t had the booster.”

“But you had the first two?”

“It’s still a risk.” She slid out the needle and topped it. “And there’s no vaccination for hepatitis C.” She put a cotton ball on his arm and made him bend his elbow to hold it in place. When she looked up at him, he could tell he was about to get a lecture.

“There are five major types of hepatitis, some with different strains,” she began, dropping the syringe into the red biohazard box. “A is basically like a bad flu. It lasts a couple of weeks, and once you have it, you develop antibodies. You can’t get it again.”

“Right.” That was the one detail he remembered from his visit to Hare’s office. The rest was pretty much a blur. He had tried to listen— really tried— as Sara’s cousin explained the differences, the risk factors, but all he could really focus on was how to get out of the office as fast as he could. After a sleepless night, he had formed several questions, but couldn’t force himself to call Hare to ask them. In the ensuing days, he had found himself swinging back and forth between denial and cold panic. Jeffrey could remember every detail of a case from fifteen years ago, but couldn’t recall a damn thing about what Hare had said.

Sara continued, “Hep B is different. It can come and go, or it can be chronic. About ten percent of the people who are infected with it become carriers. The risk of infecting another person is one in three. AIDS has a risk of about one in three hundred.”

Jeffrey certainly didn’t have Sara’s mathematical abilities, but he could calculate the odds. “You and I have had sex more than three times since Jo.”

She tried to hide it, but he saw her flinch at the name. “It’s hit-or-miss, Jeffrey.”

“I wasn’t saying—”

“Hep C is generally passed through blood contact. You could have it and not even know it. You usually don’t find out until you start showing symptoms, then it can go downhill from there. Liver fibrosis. Cirrhosis. Cancer.”

All he could do was stare at her. He knew where this was going. It was like a train wreck and there was nothing he could do but hang on and wait for the wheels to skid off the rails.

“I’m so angry at you,” she said, the most obvious statement that had ever come from her lips. “I’m angry because it’s bringing all this up again.” She paused as if to calm herself. “I wanted to forget it happened, to start over, and this just throws it back into my face.” She blinked, her eyes watering. “And if you’re sick . . .”

Jeffrey focused on what he thought he could control. “It’s my fault, Sara. I fucked up. I’m the one who ruined things. I know that.” He had learned a long time ago not to add the “but,” though in his head he went through it. Sara had been distant, spending more time at work and with her family than with Jeffrey. He wasn’t the kind of husband who expected dinner on the table every night, but he had thought she would at least make some time for him out of her busy schedule.

Her voice was barely above a whisper. “Did you do things with her that you do with me?”

“Sara—”

“Were you unsafe?”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“You know what it means,” she told him. It was her turn to stare, and he had one of those rare moments when he could read her mind.

“Jesus,” he muttered, wishing like hell he was anywhere but here. It wasn’t like they were a couple of perverts, but it was one thing to explore certain acts while you were in bed, quite another to analyze them in the cold light of day.

“If you had a cut in your mouth and she was . . .” Sara obviously couldn’t finish. “Even with normal intercourse, people can get tears, microscopic injuries.”

“I get what you’re saying,” he told her, his tone sharp enough to stop her.

Sara picked up the tube of his blood and labeled it with a ballpoint pen. “I’m not asking this because I want the gory details.”

He didn’t call her out on the lie. She had drilled him before when it happened, asking him pointed questions about every move he made, every kiss, every act, as if she had some sort of voyeuristic obsession.

She stood, opening a drawer and taking out a bright pink Barbie Band-Aid. He had kept his elbow bent the entire time, and his arm felt numb when she straightened it. Peeling back the edges, she pressed the Band-Aid down over the cotton. She didn’t speak again until she had thrown the strips into the trash.

“Aren’t you going to tell me I need to get over it?” She feigned a dismissive shrug. “It was only once, right? It’s not like it meant anything.”

Jeffrey bit his tongue, recognizing the trap. The good thing about beating this dead horse for the last five years was he knew when to shut up. Still, he struggled not to argue with her. She didn’t want to see his side of things, and maybe she had a point, but that didn’t take away the fact that there were reasons he did what he did, and not all of them had to do with him being a total bastard. He knew his part in this was to play the supplicant. Being whipped was a small price to pay for peace.

Sara prompted, “You usually say that I need to get over it. That it was a long time ago, that you’re different, that you’ve changed. That she didn’t matter to you.”

“If I say that now, will it make any difference?”

“No,” Sara said. “I don’t suppose anything will.”

Jeffrey leaned back against the wall, wishing he could read her mind now. “Where do we go from here?”

“I want to hate you.”

“That’s nothing new,” he said, but she didn’t seem to catch the levity in his voice, because she nodded in agreement.

Jeffrey shifted on the table, feeling like an idiot with his legs dangling two feet above the floor. He heard Sara whisper, “Fuck,” and his head snapped up in surprise. She seldom cursed, and he did not know whether to take the expletive as a good or bad sign.

“You irritate the hell out of me, Jeffrey.”

“I thought you found that endearing.”

She gave him a cutting look. “If you ever . . .” She let her voice trail off. “What’s the use?” she asked, but he could tell it wasn’t a rhetorical question.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, and he really meant it this time. “I’m sorry I brought this on us. I’m sorry I screwed things up. I’m sorry we had to go through that hell— that you had to go through that hell— to get us here.”

“Where’s here?”

“I guess that’s up to you.”

She sniffed, covering her face with her hands, letting out a long breath of air. When she looked back up at him, he could tell she wanted to cry but wouldn’t let herself.

Jeffrey stared down at his hand, picking at the tape on the bandage.

“Don’t mess with that,” she told him, putting her hand over his. She left it there, and he could feel her warmth penetrating through the bandage. He looked at her long, graceful fingers, the blue veins on the back of her hand making an intricate map underneath her pale white skin. He traced his fingers along hers, wondering how in the world he had ever been stupid enough to take her for granted.

“I kept thinking about that girl,” he said. “She looks a lot like—”

“Wendy,” she finished. Wendy was the name of the little girl he’d shot and killed.

He laid his other hand flat over hers, wanting to talk about anything but the shooting. “What time are you going to Macon?”

She looked at his watch. “Carlos is going to meet me at the morgue in half an hour.”

“It’s weird they could both smell the cyanide,” Jeffrey said. “Lena’s grandmother was from Mexico. Carlos is Mexican. Is there some connection?”

“Not that I know of.” She was watching him carefully, reading him like a book.

He slid down off the table, saying, “I’m okay.”

“I know.” She asked, “What about the baby?”

“There has to be a father out there somewhere.” Jeffrey knew that if they ever found the man, they would be taking a hard look at him for the murder.

Sara pointed out, “A pregnant woman is more likely to die as a result of homicide than any other factor.” She went to the sink to wash her hands, a troubled look on her face.

He said, “Cyanide isn’t just lying around on the shelves at the grocery store. Where would I get it if I wanted to kill somebody?”

“Some over-the-counter products have it.” She turned off the sink and dried her hands with a paper towel. “There have been several pediatric fatalities involving nail glue removers.”

“That has cyanide in it?”

“Yes,” Sara answered, tossing the towel into the trash. “I checked it out in a couple of books when I couldn’t sleep last night.”

“And?”

She rested her hand on the exam table. “Natural sources are found in most fruits with pits— peaches, apricots, cherries. You’d need a lot of them, so it’s not very practical. Different industries use cyanide, some medical labs.”

“What kinds of industries?” he asked. “Do you think the college might have some?”

“It’s likely,” she told him, and he made a note to find out for himself. Grant Tech was primarily an agricultural school, and they performed all sorts of experiments at the behest of the large chemical companies who were looking for the next big thing to make tomatoes grow faster or peas grow greener.

Sara provided, “It’s also a case hardener in metal plating. Some laboratories keep it around for controls. Sometimes it’s used for fumigation. It’s in cigarette smoke. Hydrogen cyanide is created by burning wool or various types of plastics.”

“It’d be pretty hard to direct smoke down a pipe.”

“He’d have to wear a mask, too, but you’re right. There are better ways to do it.”

“Like?”

“It needs an acid to activate. Mix cyanide salts with a household vinegar, and you could kill an elephant.”

“Isn’t that what Hitler used in the camps? Salts?”

“I think so,” she said, rubbing her arms with her hands.

“If a gas was used,” Jeffrey thought out loud, “then we would’ve been in danger when we opened the box.”

“It could’ve dissipated. Or been absorbed into the wood and soil.”

“Could she have gotten the cyanide through ground contamination?”

“That’s a pretty active state park. Joggers go through there all the time. I doubt anyone could’ve sneaked in a bunch of toxic waste without someone noticing and making a fuss.”

“Still?”

“Still,” she agreed. “Someone had time to bury her there. Anything’s possible.”

“How would you do it?”

Sara thought it through. “I would mix the salts in water,” she said. “Pour it down the pipe. She would obviously have her mouth close by so that she could get air. As soon as the salts hit her stomach, the acid would activate the poison. She would be dead in minutes.”

“There’s a metal plater on the edge of town,” Jeffrey said. “He does gold leafing, that sort of thing.”

Sara supplied, “Dale Stanley.”

“Pat Stanley’s brother?” Jeffrey asked. Pat was one of his best patrolmen.

“That was his wife you saw coming in.”

“What’s wrong with her kid?”

“Bacterial infection. Their oldest came in about three months ago with the worst asthma I’ve seen in a long time. He’s been in and out of the hospital with it.”

“She looked pretty sick herself.”

“I don’t see how she’s holding up,” Sara admitted. “She won’t let me treat her.”

“You think something’s wrong with her?”

“I think she’s ready for a nervous breakdown.”

Jeffrey let this sink in. “I guess I should pay them a visit.”

“It’s a horrible death, Jeffrey. Cyanide is a chemical asphyxiant. It takes all of the oxygen from the blood until there’s nothing left. She knew what was happening. Her heart must have been pumping ninety miles an hour.” Sara shook her head, as if she wanted to clear the image away.

“How long do you think it took her to die?”

“It depends on how she ingested the poison, what form was administered. Anywhere from two to five minutes. I have to think it was fairly quick. She doesn’t show any of the classic signs of prolonged cyanide poisoning.”

“Which are?”

“Severe diarrhea, vomiting, seizures, syncope. Basically, the body does everything it can to get rid of the poison as quickly as possible.”

“Can it? On its own, I mean.”

“Usually not. It’s extremely toxic. There are about ten different things you can try in the ER, from charcoal to amyl nitrate— poppers— but really, all you can do is treat symptoms as they occur and hope for the best. It’s incredibly fast-acting and almost always fatal.”

Jeffrey had to ask, “But you think it happened fast?”

“I hope so.”

“I want you to take this,” he said, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out the cell phone.

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t want that thing.”

“I like knowing where you are.”

“You know where I’m going to be,” she told him. “With Carlos, then in Macon, then back here.”

“What if they find something during the autopsy?”

“Then I’ll pick up one of the ten telephones at the lab and call you.”

“What if I forget the words to ‘Karma Chameleon’?”

She gave him a nasty look, and he laughed. “I love it when you sing to me.”

“That’s not why I don’t want it.”

He put the phone beside her on the table. “I guess asking you to do it for my sake wouldn’t change your mind?”

She stared at him for a second, then walked out of the exam room. He was still wondering if he was expected to follow her when she returned with a book in her hand.

She said, “I don’t know whether to throw this at your head or give it to you.”

“What is it?”

“I ordered it a few months ago,” she told him. “It came last week. I was going to give it to you when you finally moved in.” She held it up so he could read the title on the maroon slipcase. “Kantor’s Andersonville,” she said, adding, “It’s a first edition.”

He stared at the book, his mouth opening and closing a few times before words would come out. “It must have cost a fortune.”

She gave him a wry look as she handed him the novel. “I thought you were worth it at the time.”

He slid the book out of the paper case, feeling like he was holding the Holy Grail. The buckram was blue and white, the pages slightly faded at the edges. Carefully, he opened it to the title page. “It’s signed. MacKinlay Kantor signed it.”

She half shrugged, acting as if it wasn’t a big deal. “I know you like the book, and . . .”

“I can’t believe you did this,” Jeffrey managed, feeling like he couldn’t swallow. “I can’t believe it.”

When he was a kid, Miss Fleming, one of his English teachers, had given him the book to read during after-school detention. Jeffrey had been a general fuckup until then, pretty much resigned to the fact that his career choices were limited to mechanic or factory worker or worse, a petty thief like his old man, but the story had opened something up inside him, something that wanted to learn. The book had changed his life.

A psychiatrist would probably say there was a connection between Jeffrey’s fascination with one of the Confederacy’s most notorious Civil War prisons and his being a cop, but Jeffrey liked to think that what Andersonville gave him was a sense of empathy that he’d lacked until that point. Before Jeffrey had moved to Grant County and taken the job as police chief, he had gone to Sumter County, Georgia, to see the place for himself. He could still remember the chill he got standing just inside the stockade at Fort Sumter. Over thirteen thousand prisoners had died in the four years the prison was open. He had stood there until the sun went down and there was nothing more to see.

Sara asked, “Do you like it?”

All he could say was, “It’s beautiful.” He ran his thumb along the gilt spine. Kantor had gotten the Pulitzer for this book. Jeffrey had gotten a life.

“Anyway,” Sara said. “I thought you’d like it.”

“I do.” He tried to think of something profound to tell her that would help convey his gratitude, but instead found himself asking, “Why are you giving it to me now?”

“Because you should have it.”

He was only half-kidding when he asked, “As a going-away present?”

She licked her lips, taking her time responding. “Just because you should have it.”

From the front of the building, a man’s voice called, “Chief?”

“Brad,” Sara said. She stepped into the hall, answering, “Back here,” before Jeffrey could say anything else.

Brad opened the door, his hat in one hand, a cell phone in the other. He told Jeffrey, “You left your phone at the station.”

Jeffrey let his irritation show. “You came all the way over here to tell me that?”

“N-no, sir,” he stammered. “I mean, yes, sir, but also, we just got a call in.” He paused for a breath. “Missing person. Twenty-one years old, brown hair, brown eyes. Last seen ten days ago.”

He heard Sara whisper, “Bingo.”

Jeffrey grabbed his coat and the book. He handed the cell phone to Sara, saying, “Call me as soon as you know something on the autopsy.” Before she could object, he asked Brad, “Where’s Lena?”