Karin Slaughter - Blindsighted

"Right."

"Sara-"

She held up her hand for silence as Lena returned.

Lena said, "Frank's on his way."

JEFFREY blinked his eyes several times, forcing himself not to go back to sleep. For a few seconds, he did not know where he was, but a quick glance around the room reminded him of what had happened last night. He looked over at the window, his eyes taking their time coming into focus. He saw Sara.

He leaned his head back into the pillow, letting out a long sigh. "Remember when I used to brush your hair?"

"Sir?"

Jeffrey opened his eyes. " Lena?"

She seemed embarrassed as she walked over to the bed. "Yeah."

"I thought you were…" He waved this off. "Never mind."

Jeffrey forced himself to sit up in bed, despite the pain shooting through his right leg. He felt stiff and drugged, but he knew if he did not stay upright, the rest of the day would be blown.

"Hand me my pants," he said.

"They had to throw them away," she reminded him. "Remember what happened?"

Jeffrey grumbled an answer as he put his feet on the floor. Standing hurt like a hot knife in his leg, but he could live with the pain. "Can you find me some pants?" he asked.

Lena left the room and Jeffrey leaned against the wall so that he wouldn't sit back down. He tried to remember what had happened the night before. Part of him didn't want to deal with it. There was enough on his plate trying to find out who had killed Sibyl Adams.

"How are these?" Lena asked, tossing him a pair of scrubs.

"Great," Jeffrey said, waiting for her to turn around. He slipped them on, suppressing a groan as he lifted his leg. "We've got a full day ahead of us," he said. "Nick Shelton is coming in at ten with one of his drug guys. We'll get a rundown on the belladonna. We've got that punk, what's his name, Gordon?" He tied the string in the pants. "I want to go at him again, see if he can remember anything about when he last saw Julia Matthews." He leaned his hand against the table. "I don't think he knows where she is, but maybe he saw something."

Lena turned around without being told. "We found Julia Matthews."

"What?" he asked. "When?"

"She showed up at the hospital last night," Lena answered. There was something about her voice that sent a sense of dread coursing through his veins.

He sat back down on the bed without even thinking about it.

Lena closed the door and narrated last night's events for him. By the time she was finished, Jeffrey was pacing the room in an awkward gait.

"She just showed up on Sara's car?" he asked.

Lena nodded.

"Where is it now?" he asked. "The car, I mean?"

"Frank had it impounded," Lena said, a defensive tone to her voice.

"Where is Frank?" Jeffrey asked, leaning his hand on the bed railing.

Lena was silent, then, "I don't know."

He gave her a hard look, thinking she knew exactly where Frank was but wouldn't say.

She said, "He put Brad on guard upstairs."

"Gordon's still in jail, right?"

"Yeah, that was the first thing I checked. He was in jail all night. There's no way he could've put her on Sara's car."

Jeffrey hit the bed with his fist. He knew last night he shouldn't have taken that Demerol. This was the middle of a case, not a holiday.

"Hand me my jacket." Jeffrey held his hand out, taking the jacket from Lena. He limped out of the room, Lena on his heels. The elevator was slow in coming, but neither of them spoke.

"She's been sleeping all night," Lena said.

"Right." Jeffrey jabbed at the button. The elevator bell dinged several seconds later, and they rode up together, still in silence.

Lena began, "About last night. The shooting."

Jeffrey waved her off, stepping out of the elevator. "We'll deal with that later, Lena."

"It's just-"

He held his hand up. "You have no idea how little that matters to me right now," he said, using the railing lining the hallway to work his way toward Brad.

"Hey, Chief," Brad said, standing up from his chair.

"Nobody in?" Jeffrey asked, motioning for him to sit down.

"Not since Dr. Linton around two this morning," he answered.

Jeffrey said, "Good," leaning his hand on Brad's shoulder as he opened the door.

Julia Matthews was awake. She stared blindly out the window, not moving when they came in.

"Miss Matthews?" he said, leaning his hand against the railing of her bed.

She continued to stare, not answering.

Lena said, "She hasn't spoken since Sara took the tube out."

He looked out the window, wondering what held her attention. Dawn had broken about thirty minutes ago, but other than the clouds there wasn't anything remarkable to see out the window.

Jeffrey repeated, "Miss Matthews?"

Tears streamed down her face, but still she said nothing. He left the room, using Lena 's arm to lean on.

As soon as they were outside the room, Lena provided, "She hasn't said anything all night."

"Not one word?"

She shook her head. "We got an emergency number from the college and found an aunt. She's tracking down the parents. They're flying into Atlanta on the first available flight."

"When's that?" Jeffrey asked, checking his watch.

"Around three today."

"Frank and I will pick them up," he said, turning to Brad Stephens. "Brad, you've been on all night?"

"Yes, sir."

" Lena will relieve you in a couple of hours." He looked at Lena, daring her to protest. When nothing came, he said, "Take me home, then back to the station. You can walk to the hospital from there."

Jeffrey stared straight ahead as Lena drove to his house, trying to work his mind around what had happened last night. He felt a tension in his neck that even a handful of aspirin couldn't tame. He still could not shake the lethargy from being drugged last night, and his brain was getting sidetracked left and right, even as he came to accept that all this had happened three doors down from where he lay sleeping like a baby. Thank God Sara had been there or he would have two victims instead of one on his hands.

Julia Matthews proved that the killer was escalating. He had gone from a quick assault and murder in the bathroom to keeping a girl for a few days so that he could take his time with her. Jeffrey had seen this kind of behavior over and over again. Serial rapists learned from their mistakes. Their lives were spent figuring out the best way to obtain their objectives, and this rapist, this murderer, was honing his skills even now as Jeffrey and Lena talked about how to catch him.

He had Lena repeat her story about Julia Matthews, trying to see if it was any different in the telling, trying to pull out additional clues. There were none. Lena was very good at reporting things as she saw them, and nothing new came with the second telling.

Jeffrey asked, "What happened after?"

"After Sara left?"

He nodded.

"Dr. Headley came from Augusta. He closed her up."

Jeffrey became aware of the fact that throughout Lena 's narration of events of the night before, she was using "her" instead of the woman's name. It was common in law enforcement to look at the criminal rather than the victim, and Jeffrey always felt that this was the quickest way to lose sight of why they did the job in the first place. He didn't want Lena to do this, especially considering what had happened to her sister.

There was something different about Lena today. Whether it was a higher level of tension or anger, he could not say. Her body seemed to vibrate with it, and his main goal was to get her back to the hospital, where she could sit and decompress. He knew Lena would not leave her guard at Julia Matthews's bedside. The hospital was the only place to trust her to stay. There was, of course, the added bonus of knowing that if Lena did finally have some sort of nervous breakdown, she was in the right place. For now, he needed to use her. He needed her to be his eyes and ears for what happened last night.