Karin Slaughter - Blindsighted

"You think he was waiting for her?"

Jeffrey gave a shrug. "Seems that way. He probably came in and out the back door. Pete had disconnected the alarm so they could leave it open to air the place out."

"Yeah," she said, remembering the back door to the diner was propped open more times than not.

"So, we're looking for someone who knew her activities, right? Somebody who was familiar with the layout of the diner."

Sara did not want to answer this question, which implied that the killer was someone living in Grant, someone who knew the people and places the way only a resident could. Instead, she stood and walked back to the metal filing cabinet on the other side of her desk. She took out a fresh lab coat and slipped it on, saying, "I've already taken X rays and checked her clothing. Other than that, she's ready."

Jeffrey turned, staring out at the table in the center of the morgue. Sara looked, too, thinking that Sibyl Adams was a lot smaller in death than she seemed in life. Even Sara couldn't get used to the way death reduced people.

Jeffrey asked, "Did you know her well?"

Sara mulled over his question. Finally she said, "I guess. We both did career day at the middle school last year. Then, you know, I ran into her at the library sometimes."

"The library?" Jeffrey asked. "I thought she was blind."

"They have books on tape there, I guess." She stopped in front of him, crossing her arms. "Listen, I have to tell you this. Lena and I kind of had a fight a few weeks back."

Obviously, he was surprised. Sara was surprised, too. There were not a lot of people in town she did not get along with. But Lena Adams was certainly one of them.

Sara explained, "She called Nick Shelton at the GBI asking for a tox report on a case."

Jeffrey shook his head side to side, not understanding. "Why?"

Sara shrugged. She still didn't know why Lena had tried to go over her head, especially considering it was well known that Sara had a very good working relationship with Nick Shelton, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's field agent for Grant County.

"And?" Jeffrey prompted.

"I don't know what Lena thought she could accomplish by calling Nick directly. We had it out. No blood was shed, but I wouldn't say we parted on friendly terms."

Jeffrey shrugged, as if to say, What can you do? Lena had made a career out of ticking people off. Back when Sara and Jeffrey were married, Jeffrey had often voiced his concern over Lena 's impetuous behavior.

"If she was"-he stopped, then-"if she was raped, Sara. I don't know."

"Let's get started," Sara answered quickly, walking past him into the morgue. She stood in front of the supply cabinet, looking for a surgical gown. She paused, her hands on the doors as she played back their conversation in her mind, wondering how it had turned from a forensic evaluation into a discussion about Jeffrey's potential outrage had Sibyl Adams not just been killed but raped as well.

"Sara?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

Sara felt her anger spark at his stupid question. "What's wrong?" She found the gown and slammed the doors shut. The metal frame rattled from the force. Sara turned, ripping the sterile pack open. "What's wrong is I'm tired of you asking me what's wrong when it's pretty damn obvious what's wrong." She paused, snapping out the gown. "Think about it, Jeffrey. A woman literally died in my arms today. Not just a stranger, someone I knew. I should be at home right now taking a long shower or walking the dogs and instead I've got to go in there and cut her up, worse than she already is, so I can tell you whether or not you need to start pulling in all the perverts in town."

Her hands shook with anger as she tried to get into the gown. The sleeve was just out of her reach, and she was turning to get a better angle when Jeffrey moved to help her.

Her tone was nasty when she snapped, "I've got it." He held his hands up, palms toward her as if in surrender. "Sorry." Sara fumbled with the ties on the gown, ending up knotting the strings together. "Shit," she hissed, trying to work them back out. Jeffrey offered, "I could get Brad to go walk the dogs." Sara dropped her hands, giving up. "That's not the point, Jeffrey."

"I know it's not," he returned, approaching her the way he might a rabid dog. He took the strings and she looked down, watching him work out the knot. Sara let her gaze travel to the top of his head, noting a few gray strands in with the black. She wanted to will into him the ability to comfort her instead of trying to make a joke of everything. She wanted for him to magically develop the capacity for empathy. After ten years, she should have known better.

He loosened the knot with a smile, as if with this simple act he had just made everything better. He said, "There." Sara took over, tying the strings together in a bow. He put his hand under her chin. "You're okay," he said, not a question this time.

"Yeah," she agreed, stepping away. "I'm okay." She pulled out a pair of latex gloves, turning to the task at hand. "Let's just get the prelim over with before Lena gets back."

Sara walked over to the porcelain autopsy table bolted to the floor in the middle of the room. Curved with high sides, the white table hugged Sibyl's small body. Carlos had placed her head on a black rubber block and draped a white sheet over her. Except for the black bruise over her eye, she could be sleeping.

"Lord," Sara muttered as she folded back the sheet. Taking the body out of the kill zone had intensified the damage. Under the bright lights of the morgue, every aspect of the wound stood out. The incisions were long and sharp across the abdomen, forming an almost perfect cross. The skin puckered in places, drawing her attention away from the deep gouge at the intersection of the cross. Postmortem, wounds took on a dark, almost black, appearance. The rifts in Sibyl Adams's skin gaped open like tiny wet mouths.

"She didn't have a lot of body fat," Sara explained. She indicated the belly, where the incision opened wider just above the navel. The cut there was deeper, and the skin was pulled apart like a tight shirt that had popped a button. "There's fecal matter in the lower abdomen where the intestines were breached by the blade. I don't know if it was this deep on purpose or if the depth was accidental. It looks stretched."

She indicated the edges of the wound. "You can see the striation here at the tip of the wound. Maybe he moved the knife around. Twisted it. Also…" She paused, figuring things out as she went along. "There are traces of excrement on her hands as well as the bars in the stall, so I have to think she was cut, she put her hands to her belly, then she wrapped her hands around the bars for some reason."

She looked up at Jeffrey to see how he was holding up. He seemed rooted to the floor, transfixed by Sibyls body. Sara knew from her own experience that the mind could play tricks, smoothing out the sharp lines of violence. Even for Sara, seeing Sibyl again was perhaps worse than seeing her the first time.

Sara put her hands on the body, surprised that it was still warm. The temperature in the morgue was always low, even during the summer, because the room was underground. Sibyl should have been a lot cooler by now.

"Sara?" Jeffrey asked.

"Nothing," she answered, not prepared to make guesses. She pressed around the wound in the center of the cross. "It was a double-edged knife," she began. "Which helps you out some. Most stabbings are serrated hunting knives, right?"

"Yeah."

She pointed to a tan-looking mark around the center wound. Cleaning the body, Sara had been able to see a lot more than her initial exam in the bathroom had revealed. "This is from the cross guard, so he put it all the way in. I imagine I'll see some chipping on the spine when I open her up. I felt some irregularities when I put my finger in. There's probably some chipped bone still in there."