Karin Slaughter - Indelible

The muzzle of Smith's gun caught Lena in the forehead, stunning her for a moment. She dropped to her knees and he kicked her in the chest. She fell back just as Brad tried to come to her aid. Smith trained the Sig on Brad and pressed his foot into Lena's sternum.

He said, "I knew you would try to be a hero."

"No," Lena said, the pressure from his boot pushing the life out of her.

Smith pressed harder. "You want to be a hero?"

"No," she said. "Please." She tried to pry up his boot but that just made him press harder. "Please," she repeated, thinking about the child inside her, wondering what this was doing.

Smith exhaled sharply, like he was disappointed. "All right," he said, removing his foot. "Let that be a lesson."

Brad helped Lena stand. She found that her knees were weak and she felt sick all over. Had the pressure done something? Had Smith broken her inside?

Smith used his foot to push the plastic case toward Sara. "This should be enough to do it," he said. "Field surgery, just like on TV."

Sara shook her head. "It's too dangerous. There's no way -"

"Sure there's a way."

"He should be in an operating room."

"This'll have to do."

"He could die."

Smith indicated his gun. "He might die anyway."

"What do you have against…" Sara stopped, obviously trying to control her emotions. They seemed to get the better of her, though, and she demanded, "What do you have against us? What did we do to you?"

"It's not you," Smith told her. He picked up the phone, shouting, "What the fuck do you want?"

"Then Jeffrey," Sara said, her voice catching again. Smith would not look at her, so she addressed her words to the second gunman. "What did Jeffrey ever do to you?"

The second shooter turned toward Sara, his rifle still aimed at the door.

"Shut the fuck up," Smith barked into the phone. "We're just gonna perform a little field surgery here. That's why you sent the medics, right?"

Sara would not let go. "What?" she demanded. "What's the point? Why are you doing this?" she begged, sounding desperate. "Why?"

The second shooter kept staring at her, and Smith put the phone to his chest, waiting to see if his partner would answer. The young man had a quiet voice, but it carried when he answered, "Because Jeffrey's his father."

Sara looked as if she had seen a ghost. Her lips trembled when she asked, "Jared?"

Monday

Sara counted off the rings on the phone, waiting for her parents' answering machine to pick up. Eddie hated answering machines, but he had gotten one when Sara came back from Atlanta just to help her feel safer. After the sixth ring, the machine whirred on, her father's voice gruff as he asked the caller to leave a message.

Sara waited for the beep, then said, "Mama, it's me -"

"Sara?" Cathy said. "Hold on." Sara waited while her mother went to turn off the machine, which was upstairs in her parents' bedroom. There were only two telephones in the house: the one in the kitchen that had a fifty-foot cord and the one in the master bedroom that had become off-limits to Sara and Tessa as soon as they had reached dating age.

Sara let her gaze fall to the skeleton on the table where just this morning Luke Swan had lain. Hoss had brought three cardboard boxes to transport the bones, and though Sara had been shocked by his lackadaisical attitude, she was not in a position to question the man's methods. She had painstakingly put the skeleton together, trying to find clues that would help identify her. The whole process had taken hours, but she was finally certain about one thing: the girl had, in fact, been murdered.

Cathy came back on the line. "You okay?" she asked. "Is something wrong? Where are you?"

"I'm fine, Mama."

"I was out buying sprinkles for cupcakes."

Sara felt a tinge of guilt. Her mother only made cupcakes when she was trying to cheer Sara up.

Cathy continued, "Your daddy got called away to the Chorskes' again. Little Jack flushed a handful of crayons down the toilet."

"Again?"

"Again," she echoed. "You wanna come on over and help me with the frosting?"

"I'm sorry," Sara told her. "I'm still in Sylacauga."

"Oh." The word managed to convey disappointment as well as disapproval.

"There was a problem," Sara began, wondering whether or not to tell her mother what had happened. This morning, she had told Cathy about Robert and the shooting, but left out her suspicions about who had pulled the trigger. Now Sara realized as she talked that she could not hold back, and told her mother everything, from the sear mark to Reggie's warning to her worries about whatever Jeffrey had put in his pocket.

"Was it a bracelet or something?" Cathy asked.

"I don't know," Sara said. "It looked like a gold chain."

"Why would he do that?"

"Good question," Sara said. "I've been looking at the bones all day."

"And?"

"Her cranial sutures haven't fully closed." Sara leaned against the table, looking at the girl, wondering what had brought her short life to such a tragic end. "The knobbed ends of her long bones haven't completely fused, either."

"Which means?"

"She was probably in her late teens or early twenties."

Cathy was silent, then, "Her poor mother."

"I put in a call to the sheriff to ask if there are any open missing persons."

"And?"

"I haven't heard back from him. I haven't heard from anyone all day, as a matter of fact." Even Deacon White had barely spoken to her when she had returned with the skeleton. Sara added, "In a town this small, I don't imagine there's a long list of missing people."

"Do you think it's recent?"

"Recent as in ten, maybe fifteen years," Sara guessed. "I've been working on putting the skeleton together for the last five hours. I think I know what happened to her."

"Did she suffer?"

"No," Sara lied, hoping she sounded convincing. "I don't know what's going to happen next. I'm not sure we'll be able to come home tomorrow."

"You're going to stay with Jeffrey, then?"

Sara bit her bottom lip. She had gotten this far and decided that she might as well continue. "It seems like the more people say bad things about him, the more I want to…"

"Take care of him?"

"I wouldn't say that."

"Defend him?"

"Mama…" Sara began, her voice trailing off. "I don't know," she said, and that was the truth. "It bothers me that you're so set against us." She paused, thinking of her father. "It bothers me that Daddy hates him so much."

"I remember," Cathy said, "back when you were four or five."

Sara pressed her lips together, waiting for the lecture.

"We were all down at the Gulf, and your father took you fishing just to get away, the two of you. Do you remember?"

"No," Sara said, though she had seen the pictures often enough to think she did.

"You were fishing with rubber worms, but the crabs kept coming along and clamping onto them, thinking it was food." She laughed. "I heard your daddy screaming and cussing up a storm, yelling at the crabs to let go, that they were just holding on to worthless nothing." She waited a beat, probably to make sure Sara understood. "He tried everything to get them to let go. He even beat them with a hammer, but their claws just kept clamped down on the line no matter what he did. He finally ended up cutting bait and letting them go."

Sara let out a slow breath. "Am I the stubborn crab or the worthless bait?"

"You're our little girl," Cathy said. "And your father will come around. Eventually, he'll cut bait and let you go."

"What about you?"

She laughed. "I'm the hammer."

Sara knew this all too well. She told her mother, "I just know what my gut tells me."

"What's it saying?"