A Grant County Collection

by Karin Slaughter

  Leo said, 'Hell of a night to be on call.'

  Michael didn't voice his agreement. 'What happened?'

  He kept tossing the bag, weighing it in his hand. 'Doc says she bled to death.'

  'Maybe,' Pete corrected. Michael knew the doctor liked Leo about as much as everyone else on the force, which was to say he couldn't stand the bastard. 'I'll know more when I get her on the table.'

  'Catch,' Leo said, tossing the evidence bag down to Michael.

  Michael saw it in slow motion, the bag sailing through the air end over end like a lopsided football. He caught it before it hit the ground, his fingers wrapping around something thick and obviously wet.

  Leo said, 'Something for your cat.'

  'What the –' Michael stopped. He knew what it was.

  'Lookit his face!' Leo's shotgun laugh echoed off the walls.

  Michael could only stare at the bag. He felt blood at the back of his throat, tasted that metallic sting of unexpected fear. The voice that came out of his mouth did not sound like his own – it was more like he was under water, maybe drowning. 'What happened?'

  Leo was still laughing, so Pete answered, 'He bit off her tongue.'

  ALSO AVAILABLE IN ARROW

  Indelible

  Karin Slaughter

  When medical examiner Sara Linton and police chief Jeffrey

  Tolliver take a trip away from the small town of Heartsdale, it

  should be a straightforward weekend at the beach. But they decide

  to take a detour via Jeffrey's hometown and things go

  violently wrong when Jeffrey's best friend Robert shoots dead an

  intruder who breaks into his home. Jeffrey and Sara are first on

  the scene and Jeffrey's keen to clear his friend's name, but for

  Sara things aren't so simple. And when Jeffrey appears to

  change the crime scene, Sara no longer knows who to trust.

  Twelve years later, Sara and Jeffrey are caught up in a shockingly

  brutal attack which threatens to destroy both their lives.

  But they're not random victims. They've been targeted. And it

  seems the past is catching up with both of them . . .

  Praise for Karin Slaughter

  'A great read . . . crime fiction at its finest'

  Michael Connelly

  'Don't read this alone. Don't read this after dark. But do read it' Mirror

  'With Blindsighted, Karin Slaughter left a great many thriller

  writers looking anxiously over their shoulders. With Kisscut, she

  leaves most of them behind'

  John Connolly

  Karin

  Slaughter

  skin privilege

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  MONDAY AFTERNOON Chapter ONE

  THREE DAYS EARLIER Chapter TWO

  MONDAY EVENING Chapter THREE

  TUESDAY MORNING Chapter FOUR

  LENA Chapter FIVE

  TUESDAY MORNING Chapter SIX

  LENA Chapter SEVEN

  TUESDAY AFTERNOON Chapter EIGHT

  WEDNESDAY MORNING Chapter NINE

  LENA Chapter TEN

  WEDNESDAY EVENING Chapter ELEVEN

  LENA Chapter TWELVE

  THURSDAY MORNING Chapter THIRTEEN

  LENA Chapter FOURTEEN

  THURSDAY MORNING Chapter FIFTEEN

  LENA Chapter SIXTEEN

  THURSDAY AFTERNOON Chapter SEVENTEEN

  LENA Chapter EIGHTEEN

  THURSDAY EVENING Chapter NINETEEN

  LENA Chapter TWENTY

  THURSDAY EVENING Chapter TWENTY-ONE

  LENA Chapter TWENTY-TWO

  FRIDAY Chapter TWENTY-THREE

  Chapter TWENTY-FOUR

  Chapter TWENTY-FIVE

  Chapter TWENTY-SIX

  MONDAY Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN

  Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT

  Chapter TWENTY-NINE

  Acknowledgements

  Extract: Fractured PROLOGUE

  ALSO AVAILABLE IN ARROW Triptych

  Blindsighted

  Kisscut

  A Faint Cold Fear

  Indelible

  Faithless

  For Susan

  PROLOGUE

  What had they given her? What had the needle brought into her veins? She could barely keep her eyes open, but her ears were working almost too well. Under a sharp, piercing ring, she could hear a skip in the car's engine, the thump-thump as the tires rolled over uneven terrain. The man sitting beside her in the backseat spoke softly, almost like a lullaby you would sing to a child. There was something calming about his tone, and she found her head dropping down as he talked, only to jerk back up at Lena's curt, cutting responses.

  Her shoulders ached from stretching her hands behind her back. Or maybe they didn't ache. Maybe she just thought they should, so her brain sent the message that they did. The ache was dull, a thud that throbbed along with her beating heart. She tried to focus on other things, like the conversation going on around her or where Lena was driving the car. Instead, she found herself spiraling back into her body, cocooning into every new sensation like a newborn rolling into a blanket.

  The back of her legs were stinging from the leather, though she did not know why. It was cool out. There was a chill on the back of her neck. She remembered sitting in her father's Chevette on a long trip to Florida. There was no air-conditioning and it was the middle of August. All four windows were rolled down, but nothing would cut the heat. The radio crackled. There was no music, no station they could all agree on. In the front seat, her parents argued over the route, the cost of gas, whether or not they were speeding. Outside of Opelika, her mother told her father to pull over at the general store so they could buy frozen Cokes and orange crackers. They all winced as they moved to get out of the car, the skin on the back of their arms and legs sticking to the seats as if the heat had cooked their bodies to the vinyl.

  She felt the car lurch as Lena put the gear into park. The engine was still humming, the soft purr vibrating in her ears.

  There was someone else – not in the car, but in the distance. They were on the football field. She recognized the scoreboard, big letters screaming 'GO MUSTANGS!'

  Lena had turned around, was watching both of them. Beside her, the man shifted. He tucked the gun into the waistband of his jeans. He was wearing a ski mask, the kind you saw in horror films, where only the eyes and mouth were revealed. That was enough, though. She knew him, could almost say his name if her mouth would only move to let her.

  The man said something about being thirsty, and Lena passed him a large Styrofoam cup. The white of the cup was intense, almost blinding. Out of nowhere, she felt a thirst in her throat like never before. The suggestion of water was enough to bring tears to her eyes.

  Lena was looking at her, trying to say something without using her voice.

  Suddenly, the man slid across the backseat, moved close enough so that she could feel the heat off his body, smell the subtle musk of his aftershave. She felt his hand go around the back of her neck, resting lightly on the nape. His fingers were soft, gentle. She concentrated on his voice, knew that what was being said was important, that she had to listen.

  'You gonna leave?' the man asked Lena. 'Or do you want to stay put and hear what I have to say?'

  Lena had turned away from them, maybe had her hand on the door handle. She turned back now, saying, 'Tell me.'

  'If I had wanted to kill you,' he began, 'you would already be dead. You know that.'

  'Yes.'

  'Your friend here ...' He said something else, but his words were jumbled together so that by the time they reached her ears, they meant nothing. She could only look at Lena and judge from the other woman's reaction what her own should be.

  Fear. She should be afraid.

  'Don't hurt her,' Lena begged. 'She's got children. Her husband—'

  'Yeah, it's sad. B
ut you make your choices.'

  'You call that a choice?' Lena snapped. There was more, but all that came across was terror. The exchange continued, then she felt a sudden chill come over her. A familiar odor filled the car – heavy, pungent. She knew what it was. She'd smelled it before but her mind could not tell her when or where.

  The door opened. The man slid out of the car and stood there, looking at her. He did not look sad or upset. He looked resigned. She had seen that look before. She knew him – knew the cold eyes behind the mask, the wet lips. She had known him all of her life.

  What was the smell? She should remember this smell.

  He murmured a few words. Something flashed in his hand – a silver cigarette lighter.

  She understood now. Panic sent a flood of adrenaline to her brain, cutting through the fog, slashing right to her heart.

  Lighter fluid. The cup had contained lighter fluid. He had poured it all over her body. She was soaked – dripping in it.

  'No!' Lena screamed, lunging, fingers splayed.

  The lighter dropped onto her lap, the flame igniting the liquid, the liquid burning her clothes. There was a horrible keening – it was coming from her own throat as she sat helplessly watching the flames lick up her body. Her arms jerked up, her toes and feet curled in like a baby's. She thought again of that long-ago trip to Florida, the exhausting heat, the sharp, unbearable rip of pain as her flesh cooked to the seat.

  MONDAY

  AFTERNOON

  ONE

  Sara Linton looked at her watch. The Seiko had been a gift from her grandmother on the day Sara graduated from high school. On Granny Em's own graduation day, she had been four months from marriage, a year and a half from bearing the first of her six children and thirty-eight years from losing her husband to cancer. Higher education was something Emma's father had seen as a waste of time and money, especially for a woman. Emma had not argued – she was raised during a time when children did not think to disagree with their parents – though she made sure that all four of her surviving children attended college.

  'Wear this and think of me,' Granny Em had said that day on the school campus as she closed the watch's silver bracelet around Sara's wrist. 'You're going to do everything you ever dreamed of, and I want you to know that I will always be right there beside you.'

  As a student at Emory University, Sara had constantly looked at the watch, especially through advanced biochemistry, applied genetics, and human anatomy classes that seemed by law to be taught by the most boring, monosyllabic professors that could be found. In medical school, she had impatiently glanced at the watch on Saturday mornings as she stood outside the lab, waiting for the professor to come and unlock the door so she could finish her experiments. During her internship at Grady Hospital, she had stared blurry-eyed at its white face, trying to make out the hands, as she calculated how much longer she had left in thirty-six-hour shifts. At the Heartsdale Children's Clinic, she had closely followed the second hand as she pressed her fingers to a child's thin wrist, counting the beats of his heart as they ticked beneath his skin, seeking to discern if an 'achy all-over' was a serious ailment or if it just meant the kid did not want to go to school that day.

  For almost twenty years, Sara had worn the watch. The crystal had been replaced twice, the battery numerous times, and the bracelet once because Sara could not stomach the thought of cleaning out the dried blood of a woman who had died in her arms. Even at Granny Em's funeral, Sara had found herself touching the smooth bezel around the face, tears streaming down her own face at the realization that she could never again see her grandmother's quick, open smile or the sparkle in her eyes as she learned of her oldest granddaughter's latest accomplishment.

  Now, looking at the watch, for the first time in her life Sara was glad her grandmother was not there with her, could not read the anger in Sara's eyes, know the humiliation that burned in her chest like an uncontrollable fire as she sat in a conference room being deposed in a malpractice suit filed by the parents of a dead patient. Everything Sara had ever worked for, every step she had taken that her grandmother could not, every accomplishment, every degree, was being rendered meaningless by a woman who was all but calling Sara a baby killer.

  The lawyer leaned over the table, eyebrow raised, lip curled, as Sara glanced at the watch. 'Dr. Linton, do you have a more pressing appointment?'

  'No.' Sara tried to keep her voice calm, to quell the fury that the lawyer had obviously been stoking for the last four hours. Sara knew that she was being manipulated, knew that the woman was trying to bait her, to get Sara to say something horrible that would forever be recorded by the little man leaning over the transcript machine in the corner. Knowing this did not stop Sara from reacting. As a matter of fact, the knowledge made her even angrier.

  'I've been calling you Dr. Linton all this time.' The lawyer glanced down at an open folder in front of her. 'Is it Tolliver? I see that you remarried your ex-husband, Jeffrey Tolliver, six months ago.'

  'Linton is fine.' Under the table, Sara was shaking her foot so hard that her shoe was about to fall off. She crossed her arms over her chest. There was a sharp pain in her jaw from clenching her teeth. She shouldn't be here. She should be at home right now, reading a book or talking on the phone to her sister. She should be going over patient files or sorting through old medical journals she never seemed to have time to catch up on.

  She should be trusted.

  'So,' the lawyer continued. The woman had given her name at the start of the deposition, but Sara couldn't remember it. All she had been able to concentrate on at the time was the look on Beckey Powell's face. Jimmy's mother. The woman whose hand Sara had held so many times, the friend she had comforted, the person with whom she had spent countless hours on the phone, trying to put into simple English the medical jargon the oncologists in Atlanta were feeding the mother to explain why her twelve-year-old son was going to die.

  From the moment they'd entered the room, Beckey had glared at Sara as if she were a murderer. The boy's father, a man Sara had gone to school with, had not even been able to look her in the eye.

  'Dr. Tolliver?' the lawyer pressed.

  'Linton,' Sara corrected, and the woman smiled, just as she did every time she scored a point against Sara. This happened so often that Sara was tempted to ask the lawyer if she suffered from some unusually petty form of Tourette's.

  'On the morning of the seventeenth – this was the day after Easter – you got lab results from the cell blast you'd ordered performed on James Powell. Is that correct?'

  James. She made him sound so adult. To Sara, he would always be the six-year-old she had met all those years ago, the little boy who liked playing with his plastic dinosaurs and eating the occasional crayon. He'd been so proud when he told her that he was called Jimmy, just like his dad.

  'Dr. Tolliver?'

  Buddy Conford, one of Sara's lawyers, finally spoke up. 'Let's cut the crap, honey.'

  'Honey?' the lawyer echoed. She had one of those husky, low voices most men found irresistible. Sara could tell Buddy fell into this category, just as she could tell that the fact the man found his opponent desirable heightened his sense of competitiveness.

  Buddy smiled, his own point made. 'You know her name.'

  'Please instruct your client to answer the question, Mr. Conford.'

  'Yes,' Sara said, before they could exchange any more barbs. She had found that lawyers could be quite verbose at three-hundred-fifty dollars an hour. They would parse the meaning of the word 'parse' if the clock was ticking. And Sara had two lawyers: Melinda Stiles was counsel for Global Medical Indemnity, an insurance company to whom Sara had paid almost three and a half million dollars over the course of her medical career. Buddy Conford was Sara's personal lawyer, whom she'd hired to protect her from the insurance company. The fine print in all of Global's malpractice policies stipulated limited liability on the part of the company when a patient's injury was a direct result of a doctor's willful negligence. Buddy
was here to make sure that did not happen.

  'Dr. Linton? The morning of the seventeenth?'

  'Yes,' Sara answered. 'According to my notes, that's when I got the lab results.'

  Sharon, Sara remembered. The lawyer was Sharon Connor. Such an innocuous name for such a horrible person.

  'And what did the lab results reveal to you?'

  'That more than likely, Jimmy had acute myeloblastic leukemia.'

  'And the prognosis?'

  'That's out of my realm. I'm not an oncologist.'

  'No. You referred the Powells to an oncologist, a friend of yours from college, a Dr. William Harris in Atlanta?'

  'Yes.' Poor Bill. He was named in the lawsuit, too, had been forced to hire his own attorney, was battling with his own insurance company.

  'But you are a doctor?'

  Sara took a deep breath. She had been instructed by Buddy to only answer questions, not pointed comments. God knew she was paying him enough for his advice. She might as well start taking it.

  'And surely as a doctor you know what acute myeloblastic leukemia is?'

  'It's a group of malignant disorders characterized by the replacement of normal bone marrow with abnormal cells.'