Karin Slaughter - Blindsighted

"It was hers," Hank said.

Lena stared at her uncle, not sure what to say.

He stood up, taking a mug from the cabinet. "You want some time to yourself, or do you want me around?"

Lena considered his question. She needed to be alone, to get some sense of herself back, and she could not do that around Hank of all people. "Are you going back to Reece?"

"I thought I'd stay at Nan's tonight and help her sort through some things."

Lena felt a slight panic. "She's not throwing things away, is she?"

"No, of course not. She's just going through things, getting her clothes together." Hank leaned against the counter, his arms crossed. "She shouldn't have to do that alone."

Lena stared at her hands. There was something under her fingernails. She couldn't tell if it was dirt or blood. She put her finger in her mouth, using her bottom teeth to clean it.

Hank watched this. He said, "You could come by later if you felt like it."

Lena shook her head, biting the nail. She would tear it off to the quick before she let the blood stay there. "I have to get up early for work tomorrow," she lied.

"But if you change your mind?"

"Maybe," she mumbled around her finger. She tasted blood, surprised to see that it was her own. The cuticle had come away on the nail. A bright red dot radiated from the spot.

Hank stood, staring, then grabbed his coat off the back of his chair. They had been through this kind of thing before, though admittedly never on this scale. It was an old, familiar dance, and they both knew the moves. Hank took one step forward, Lena took two steps back. Now wasn't the time to change any of this.

He said, "You can call me if you need me. You know that, right?"

"Mm-hm," she mumbled, pressing her lips together. She was going to cry again, and Lena thought that a part of her would die if she broke down in front of Hank again.

He seemed to sense this because he put his hand on her shoulder, then kissed the top of her head.

Lena kept her head down, waiting for the click as the front door closed. She gave a long sigh as Hank's car backed out of the driveway.

The kettle was steaming, but the whistle had not started yet. Lena did not particularly like tea, but she rummaged around in the cabinets anyway, looking for the bags. She found a box of Tummy Mint just as a knock came at the back door.

She expected to see Hank, so Lena was surprised when she opened the door.

"Oh, hi," she said, rubbing her ear as a shrill noise came. She realized the teakettle was whistling and said, "Hold on a second."

She was turning off the burner when she felt a presence behind her, then a sharp sting came to her left thigh.

SARA stood in front of the body of Julia Matthews with her arms crossed over her chest. She stared at the girl, trying to assess her with a clinical eye, trying to separate the girl whose life Sara had saved from the dead woman on the table. The incision Sara had made to access Julias heart was not yet healed, the black sutures still thick with dried blood. A small hole was at the base of the woman's chin. Burns around the entrance wound revealed the barrel of the gun was pressed into the chin when it was fired. A gaping hole at the back of the girl's head revealed the exit wound. Bone hung from the open skull, like macabre ornaments on a bloody Christmas tree. The smell of gunpowder was in the air.

Julia Matthews's body lay on the porcelain autopsy table much as Sibyl Adams's had a few days ago. At the head of the table was a faucet with a black rubber hose attached. Hanging over this was an organ scale much like the scales grocers use to weigh fruit and vegetables. Beside the table were the tools of autopsy: a scalpel, a sixteen-inch-long surgically sharpened bread knife, a pair of equally sharpened scissors, a pair of forceps, or "pickups," a Stryker saw to cut bone, and a set of long-handled pruning shears one would normally find in a garage by the lawn mower. Cathy Linton had a similar set for herself, and whenever Sara saw her mother pruning azaleas she always thought about using the shears at the morgue to cut away the rib cage.

Sara mindlessly followed the various steps for preparing the body of Julia Matthews for autopsy. Her thoughts were elsewhere, back to the night before, when Julia Matthews was on Sara's car; back to when the girl was alive and had a chance.

Sara had never minded performing autopsies before, never been disturbed by death. Opening a body was like opening a book; there were many things which could be learned from tissue and organ. In death, the body was available for thorough evaluation. Part of the reason Sara had taken the job as medical examiner for Grant County was that she had become bored with her practice at the clinic. The coroner's job presented a challenge, an opportunity to learn a new skill and to help people. Though the thought of cutting up Julia Matthews, exposing her body to more abuse, cut through Sara like a knife.

Again, Sara looked at what was left of Julia Matthews's head. Gunshots to the head were notoriously unpredictable. Most times the victim ended up comatose, a vegetable who, through the miracles of modern science, quietly lived out the rest of the life they did not want in the first place. Julia Matthews had done a better job than most when she put the gun under her chin and pulled the trigger. The bullet had entered her skull at an upward trajectory, breaking the sphenoid, plowing along the lateral cerebral fissure, then busting out through the occipital bone. The back of the head was gone, affording a straight view into the brain case. Unlike in her earlier suicide attempt witnessed by the scarring on her wrists, Julia Matthews had meant to end her life. Unquestionably, the girl had known what she was doing.

Sara felt sick to her stomach. She wanted to shake the girl back to life, to demand she go on living, to ask her how she could have gone through everything that had happened to her in the last few days only to end up taking her life. It seemed that the very horrors Julia Matthews had survived had also ended up killing her.

"You okay?" Jeffrey asked, giving her a concerned look.

"Yeah," Sara managed, wondering if she really was. She felt raw, like a wound that would not scab. Sara knew that if Jeffrey made a pass at her, she would take him up on the offer. All she could think of was how good it would feel to let him take her into his arms, to feel his lips kissing hers, his tongue in her mouth. Her body ached for him now in a way she had not ached for him in years. She did not particularly want sex, she just wanted the assurance of his presence. She wanted to feel protected. She wanted to belong to him. Sara had learned a long time ago that sex was the only way Jeffrey knew how to give her these things.

From across the table, Jeffrey asked, "Sara?"

She opened her mouth, thinking to proposition him, but stopped herself. So much had happened in the last few years. So much had changed. The man she wanted did not really exist anymore. Sara wasn't sure if he ever had.

She cleared her throat. "Yeah?"

"You want to hold off on this?" he asked.

"No," Sara answered in a clipped tone, inwardly berating herself for thinking she needed Jeffrey. The truth was she didn't. She had gotten this far without him. She could certainly go further.

She tapped her foot on the remote for the Dictaphone, stating, "This is the unembalmed body of a thin but well-built, well-nourished young adult white female weighing"-Sara looked at the chalkboard over Jeffrey's shoulder where she had made notations-"one hundred and twelve pounds and having a length of sixty-four inches." She tapped the recorder off, taking a deep breath to clear her mind. Sara was having trouble breathing.

"Sara?"