A Faint Cold Fear

by Karin Slaughter

  “How’d that happen?”

  “She saw it under the bed.”

  “Did she touch it?”

  “All over.”

  “Does she have an alibi?”

  “I was with Lena all morning,” Jeffrey said. “She was with White all night. They alibi each other.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “I don’t trust either of them right now, especially considering Ethan White’s criminal background. You don’t wake up one day and stop being a racist. The only thing that ties all of them together, including Tess, is something to do with race.”

  Sara knew where he was going with this. “We’ve talked this through already. How would anyone know I was going to bring Tessa to the scene? It’s too improbable.”

  “Lena just keeps popping up too much in this for her to not be a part of it.”

  Sara knew what he meant. They were having the same problem with Andy Rosen’s alleged suicide. Coincidences were seldom really that.

  “This White,” Jeffrey began, “he’s a nasty piece of shit, Sara. I hope you never meet him.” His tone turned harsh. “What the hell is she doing with somebody like that?”

  Sara sat back in her chair, and she waited for his attention. “Considering what Lena’s been through, it’s no wonder she’s mixed up with someone like Ethan White. He’s a dangerous man. I know you keep calling him a kid, but from what you’ve told me, he doesn’t act like a kid. Lena could be attracted to that danger. She’s going with the known quantity.”

  He shook his head, like that was something he could not accept. Sometimes Sara wondered if he knew Lena at all. Jeffrey tended to see people the way he wanted to see them rather than the way they really were. This had actually been a running problem in Sara’s marriage, and she did not like being reminded of it now.

  Sara said, “Except for Ellen Schaffer, this could be a series of coincidences, compounded by you and Lena being in the pissing contest to end all pissing contests.” She put her finger to his mouth to shush him. “I know what you’re going to say, but you can’t deny that there’s hostility between you and Lena. As a matter of fact, she could be protecting White just to piss you off.”

  “It’s possible,” he agreed, much to her surprise.

  Sara sat back in her chair. “Do you really think she’s been drinking?” she asked. “Drinking enough to have a problem?”

  He shrugged, and Sara was reminded again of how much Jeffrey hated alcoholics. His father had been a violent drunk, and though Jeffrey claimed to have transcended his abusive childhood, Sara knew that an alcoholic could set Jeffrey off more quickly than a murderer could.

  Sara said, “Being hungover doesn’t mean she has a problem—it just means she had too much to drink one night.” Sara let that sink in before continuing. “And what about this?” she asked, paging through the pictures. She showed him the photo of the stomped syringe on the floor.

  “I’m pretty sure she didn’t do that,” he admitted. “Eyeballing the tread with White’s shoe, it’s almost identical.”

  “No,” Sara said. “You’re missing the bigger question. Dickson had two syringes of the purest meth you can buy. If he wanted to kill himself—or if someone wanted to make it look like he killed himself—why not use the second syringe? The meth was so strong that the second dose would have killed him almost instantly.”

  “Scarfing is a pretty embarrassing way to go,” Jeffrey pointed out, using the slang for autoerotic asphyxiation. “Could be somebody who hated him.”

  “That hook was in the wall a long time,” Sara told him, finding the photograph. “The belts show wear patterns to indicate they’ve been used like this before. The foam would keep the leather from marking his neck. He had it all set up, including the porn on the television.” She fanned through the pictures as she talked. “He probably thought he was safe sitting down. Most of these cases are closet rods and chairs that slip out from under their feet.” She indicated the prescription bottles. “If he was anorgasmic, he would certainly be looking for a better way to build a mousetrap.”

  Jeffrey could not let Lena go. “Why would Lena contaminate the scene if she didn’t have anything to hide? She never did anything like that before.”

  Sara could not answer his question. “If White is the perpetrator, what’s his motivation for killing Scooter?”

  Jeffrey shook his head. “No reason that I can see.”

  “Drugs?” Sara asked.

  “White checks out clean every week as part of his parole, but Lena had some Vicodin in her apartment.”

  “Did you ask her about it?”

  “She said it’s for the pain from what happened to her last year.”

  Unbidden, an image of Lena during the rape exam came to Sara’s mind.

  Jeffrey said, “She had a valid prescription.”

  Sara realized she had lost track of the conversation for a moment. She asked, “Schaffer didn’t use drugs?”

  “No.”

  “Dickson doesn’t sound like an ethnic name.”

  “Southern Baptist, born and bred.”

  “He wasn’t seeing anyone?”

  “Smelling like that?” Jeffrey reminded her.

  “Good point.” Sara stood, wondering where Brock was. “Can we start? I told Mama I would drive back as soon as I can.”

  Jeffrey asked, “How’s Tessa?”

  “Physically? She’ll recover.” Sara felt herself tearing up. “Don’t ask me about the rest, okay?”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Okay.”

  She opened the door and stepped out into the morgue. “Carlos,” she said, “Brock’s going to be here soon. You can take your break when he gets here.”

  Jeffrey seemed curious but did not ask the obvious question. He told Carlos, “Good call on that tattoo. You were right.”

  Carlos smiled, something he never did when Sara complimented him.

  She tied the gown around her waist as she walked over to the lightbox to look at the X rays Carlos had taken of William Dickson. After she was certain she had given each film a thorough review, she walked back to the body.

  The scale hanging over the end of the table swayed in the breeze, and even though Carlos never forgot, Sara checked to see that the weight was set back to zero. Brock had said he would be right over, but he had yet to show. Sara did not want to start the formal autopsy until he was gone.

  She said, “I’ll do a cursory exam before Brock gets here.”

  She put on a pair of gloves and pulled back the sheet, exposing William Dickson to the harsh overhead lights. A perfect impression of the belt looked painted in black on his neck. His left hand was still wrapped around his penis.

  Sara asked Jeffrey, “He was left-handed?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Really?” Sara asked, surprised. Granted, she had not given it any thought, but she had always assumed that a man would use his dominant hand.

  Jeffrey looked away as she unwrapped William Dickson’s hand from his penis. The fingers remained curled, but the rigor was slowly dissipating in the upper body, where it had first started. The tips of his fingers were dark purple, and his penis showed vividly where his hand had been.

  “Ouch,” Carlos whispered, and it was the first time he had ever commented on anything Sara had found. He was looking at the pronounced cork-colored bilateral ridges around the testicles.

  “Are those knife wounds?” Jeffrey asked.

  “It looks more like electrical burns,” Sara said, recognizing the color. “Fresh, probably within the last few days. This could explain the electrical cord by the bed.” She picked up a swab and pressed it to the burn, rolling off a slick glob that looked like ointment. She sniffed it, saying, “This smells like Vaseline.”

  Carlos held out a bag for the swab.

  Jeffrey asked, “Are you supposed to use that on burns?”

  “No, but considering his medicine cabinet, he doesn’t strike me as the type to read the directions.” She studied t
he burns. “He could have been using the Vaseline as a lubricant.”

  Carlos and Jeffrey exchanged a look of disagreement.

  Jeffrey said, “He was probably using Tiger Balm. There was a jar of it by the TV.”

  Sara remembered the jar from the picture, but she had thought nothing of it. “Isn’t that for sore muscles?”

  Neither one of them answered, so Sara returned to the burns. “He might have been using electrical stimulation to help him reach orgasm.”

  Jeffrey said, “That’s not the first thing that would pop into my mind to take care of that.”

  “He was shooting pure meth. I doubt he was thinking clearly most of the time.” She asked Carlos, “Can you help me turn him over?”

  The young man put on a pair of gloves, and they both maneuvered Dickson onto his stomach. There was pronounced lividity on the dead boy’s buttocks and a long horizontal mark on his back where he had been leaning up against the bed.

  She examined William Dickson from head to toe, not really certain what she was looking for. Finally she found something to remark upon.

  “There’s scarring around his anus,” she told Jeffrey, who was looking at the sinks.

  “He was gay?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Not necessarily,” Sara said, snapping off her gloves. She walked over for a new pair, saying, “There’s no telling when or how it was done. Some heterosexual men are into that sort of thing.”

  Jeffrey squared his shoulders as if to say, Not this heterosexual man.

  He pointed out, “If he was gay, this could be some kind of hate crime.”

  “Do you have any other evidence that he was gay?”

  “No one is saying anything about him.”

  “What about the tape he was watching?”

  “Straight,” Jeffrey conceded.

  “You might want to go back and look for something he could use on himself. Considering what else he was into, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had an anal plug or—”

  Jeffrey stopped her. “Something like a giant red pacifier?”

  She nodded and he scowled, probably remembering that he had touched it.

  Sara went back to work. She took photographs of what she had found, then asked Carlos to help her turn the body again. Dickson was loosening up, but the rigor still made it awkward.

  She repeated the examination on the front of Dickson’s body, checking every nook and crevice. His jaw was loose enough for her to force open his mouth and she could not see anything obstructing the airway. The furrow marks around his neck and the petechiae dotting the skin around his bloodshot eyes were all consistent with strangulation.

  She told Jeffrey, “Pressure against the carotid arteries, which take oxygenated blood to the brain, would bring about transient cerebral hypoxia. It takes about ten to fifteen seconds before loss of consciousness from the occlusion.”

  Jeffrey asked, “In English.”

  “The object is to cut off the blood flow to the head in order to increase the pleasure from masturbation. Either he mistimed it or got carried away or passed out from the loss of blood, or he came down too hard from the meth . . .” Sara let her voice trail off, knowing that Jeffrey was considering all of these things. She said, “I’ll check the hyoid and thyroid cartilages when I open the neck, but I doubt they’ve been crushed. Most of the pressure was on the carotids. I’m telling you, between the hook and the padding on the belt, it looks like he knew what he was doing.”

  “Looks like,” Jeffrey repeated, but Sara could not share his skepticism.

  “I guess we can go ahead and start,” she said, thinking the internal examination would give them something more conclusive.

  “You don’t want to wait for Brock?”

  “He’s probably been held up,” she said. “We’ll just start and take a break when he comes.”

  Sara tapped on the Dictaphone and proceeded with William Dickson’s autopsy, calling out the usual findings, examining every organ and every patch of skin under the magnifying glass until she was certain there was nothing else she could do. With the exception of a fatty liver and a softening in the brain consistent with long-term drug use, there was nothing remarkable about the boy other than the way he had died.

  She ended the dictation with the same conclusion she had given Jeffrey earlier. “Death is due to the occlusion of the carotid arteries with cerebral hypoxia.” She tapped off the mike, removing her gloves.

  “Nothing,” Jeffrey summarized.

  “Nothing,” Sara agreed, putting on a fresh pair of gloves. She was sewing the chest together with a standard baseball stitch when the service elevator by the stairs dinged.

  Carlos was gone before the doors opened.

  “Hey, lady,” Brock said, rolling a stainless-steel gurney into the morgue. “Sorry I’m late. Some recently bereaveds showed up I had to deal with. I woulda had Mama call, but you know.” He smiled at Jeffrey, then back at Sara, unable to say that he couldn’t trust his own mother. “Anyway, I figgered you folks could use the extra time.”

  “That’s fine,” Sara assured him, walking toward the freezer.

  “I’m not getting this one,” Brock said, indicating Dickson. “Parker’s over in Madison got ’em.” The gurney caught on a broken tile, and Brock stumbled.

  Jeffrey asked him, “Can I give you a hand?”

  Brock chuckled, righting himself. He said, “I got my license and registration, Chief,” as if Jeffrey had pulled him over for a traffic stop.

  Sara wheeled out Andy Rosen and started to help Brock transfer the body.

  Brock asked, “You need your bag?”

  “Just bring it by sometime tomorrow,” she told him. Then, thinking of Carlos, she amended, “Actually, do you mind using yours?”

  “I’m like the Boy Scouts,” he told her, reaching under the gurney and removing a dark green body bag with the Brock and Sons emblem printed in gold across the side.

  Sara tugged the zipper while he laid out the bag on his gurney.

  “Nice incision,” Brock noted. “I can just glue that together and stick some cotton on it, no problem.”

  “Good,” Sara told him, not knowing what else to say.

  “Took a look at him yesterday when I was here just to see what the embalming would be like.” He gave a resigned sigh. “Guess I can use some putty to patch the head. That sucker’ll leak sure as I’m standing here.”

  Sara stopped what she was doing. “What will leak?”

  He pointed to the forehead. “The hole. Thought you saw that, Sara. I’m sorry.”

  “No,” Sara said, grabbing the magnifying glass off the clip. She pushed back Andy Rosen’s hair, finding a small puncture wound in the scalp. The body had been sitting for a while, giving the skin time to contract away from the hole. Sara could easily see it without the magnifier.

  She said, “I can’t believe I missed this.”

  “You examined his head,” Jeffrey told her. “I saw you do it.”

  “I was so tired last night,” she said, thinking that was a poor excuse. “Goddammit.”

  Brock was visibly shocked by the utterance. Sara knew she should apologize, but she was too angry. The puncture wound on Andy Rosen’s forehead was obviously from a needle. Someone had given him an injection in his scalp, hoping the small wound would be hidden by the hair follicles. Had Brock not pointed it out, she would have never seen it.

  She told Jeffrey, “I need Carlos. We’re going to take blood and tissue samples again.”

  Jeffrey asked, “Is there any blood left?”

  Brock said, “We don’t—”

  “Of course there is,” Sara interrupted. Then, more to herself, she said, “I want to excise this area around his forehead. Who knows what else I missed?”

  She took off her glasses, so angry her vision was blurred. “Goddammit,” she repeated. “How could I have missed this?”

  “I missed it, too,” Jeffrey said.

  Sara bit her lower lip so that she would not explode. She told Broc
k, “I need him for at least another hour.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Brock told her, anxious to leave. “Just call me when you’re finished.”

  Sara sat at her kitchen counter, staring at the microwave, wondering if she was going to give herself cancer sitting this close to the machine. She was so tired she did not care, and so angry with herself for missing the needle puncture in Andy Rosen’s scalp that she almost welcomed the punishment. Three hours of the most intricate physical examination Sara had ever performed in her life had revealed nothing else on Rosen. From there she had performed the same detailed examination on William Dickson’s body, making Carlos and Jeffrey follow her every move to triple-check what she was doing.

  She had spent another hour with her eyes pressed to the microscope, studying the pieces of Ellen Schaffer’s scalp that had been recovered at the scene. By then Jeffrey was able to convince Sara that even if the evidence was not damaged beyond detection, she was too tired to find it. She needed to go home and get some sleep. He had promised that after she got some rest, he would drive her back to the morgue so she could review everything again. The idea had seemed right at the time, but guilt and the need for answers had kept Sara from even thinking about closing her eyes. She had missed something crucial to the case, and but for Brock, Andy Rosen would have been cremated, destroying all hope of Sara’s finding the one thing that would prove he was murdered.

  The oven timer beeped, and Sara pulled out the chicken-and-pasta dinner, knowing before she peeled off the film that she would not be able to eat it. Even the dogs turned up their noses at the smell, and she contemplated taking the meal to the outside garbage before laziness won over and she dumped it down the garbage disposal in the sink.

  The refrigerator did not have much on offer, except for a tangerine that had shriveled up and glued itself to the glass shelf and two fresh-looking tomatoes of questionable origin. Sara stared blankly into the fridge, debating her options, until her stomach started to grumble. She finally decided and ate a tomato sandwich sitting at the kitchen island so she could look out at the lake. There was a rumble of thunder outside. The storm had followed them back from Atlanta.