Karin Slaughter - Kisscut

Brad gave her a smile, obviously glad to have something to do. "Yes, ma'am."

After he had left, Lena asked in a matter-of-fact way, "Have y'all already done the baby?"

Jeffrey answered, "Yes," even though he had not been there. He noticed the chart at the end of the table and picked it up. Sara did not say anything as he took his pen out of his breast pocket and scribbled his signature along the bottom of the autopsy report. Technically, Sara had violated several laws by performing the autopsy without at least one witness.

"Is the girl in the freezer?" Lena asked, walking toward the door. There was a cavalier bounce to her walk, as if what Lena was seeing was a common occurrence. Sara knew Lena had been through a lot recently, but she still felt angry at the other woman's attitude.

"Here?" Lena prompted, her hand on the freezer door.

Sara nodded, not moving. Jeffrey walked over to help Lena, and Sara zipped the bag closed around the baby before she could stop herself. Her heart was pounding like a drum in her chest by the time Lena and Jeffrey rolled the gurney containing Jenny Weaver's body into the room. They both braked the wheels by the table, waiting for Sara to move the bag. Finally, Jeffrey scooped the large black bag into his arms. Sara looked away as he cradled what was obviously the head with his hand. The loose ends of the bag dragged the floor as he walked toward the freezer.

Lena made a point of looking at her watch. Sara wanted to slap her, but instead she walked over to the metal supply cabinet beside the sinks. She opened a sterile pack and slipped on a gown, glancing over her shoulder at the freezer, wondering what was taking Jeffrey so long. Sara was helping Lena move the body onto the table when he finally emerged.

"Here," he said, taking Lena 's place as they maneuvered the body of Jenny Weaver onto the white porcelain table. Weaver was a large girl, and the hoses at the head of the table rattled as they moved her into place.

Sara propped the head up on a black block, trying to think of herself as a coroner rather than the girl's pediatrician. In her ten years as Grant's medical examiner, there had been only four cases where Sara had known the deceased. Jenny Weaver was the first victim who had also been a patient at the clinic.

Sara rolled over a fresh tray with clean instruments, making sure she had everything that she needed. The two hoses at the head of the table were used to evacuate the body during examination. Over this was a large scale for weighing organs. At the foot was a tray for dissecting. The table itself was concave in shape, with high sides to keep matter from spilling over and a pronounced downward slant toward a large brass drain.

Carlos, Sara's assistant at the morgue, had placed a white sheet over Jenny Weaver's body. A medium-sized red dot spread out over the part that covered her throat. Sara had let Carlos take care of Jenny while she worked on the child. He had taken the X rays and prepared Jenny for autopsy while Sara had tried in vain to do something right for the baby. If Carlos was surprised when Sara told him to go home when he was finished with Jenny, he did not say.

Sara folded back the sheet, stopping just above the girl's chest. The wound was far from clean and most of the right side of her neck dangled like pieces of raw meat. Cartilage and bone stood out from the black blood that had clotted around the wound.

Sara walked over to the light box on the wall and turned it on. The light flickered, then showed the X rays Carlos had taken of Jenny Weaver.

She studied the films carefully, at first not understanding what she was seeing. She checked the name on the chart again before calling out her findings. "You can see here there are faded lines of a fracture to the left humerus, which I would date at less than a year old. It's not a typical fracture, especially for someone who was not athletic, so I'm assuming it came from some kind of abuse."

"Did you treat her for this?" Jeffrey asked.

"Of course not," Sara answered. "I would have reported it. Any doctor would have reported it."

"Okay," Jeffrey said, holding up his hands. Her tone must have been sharper than Sara realized, because Lena seemed to be taking a sudden interest in the floor.

Sara turned back to the X ray. "There's also evidence of trauma around the costal cartilage, which is here in the rib." She pointed to the chest film. "Up here, near the sternum, there's bruising that's consistent with a hard push or shove, moving posteriorly. That's to the back." She let this sink in, wondering if Jenny had seen another doctor for this. A first-year resident would recognize something was not right with this kind of injury.

Sara said, "I would guess the person who did this was taller than her. It's recent, too."

Sara popped a new X ray into the light box. She crossed her arms over her chest, studying the film. "This is the pelvic girdle," she explained. "Note the fade line here against the ischium. This would indicate traumatic pressure to the pubis. It's what's commonly referred to as a stress fracture."

"Stress from what?" Jeffrey asked.

Sara was surprised when Lena provided the answer to Jeffrey.

"She was raped," Lena said, the same way she might say the girl's eyes were blue. "Raped hard. Right?"

Sara nodded, and was about to say something else when she heard footsteps on the stairs again. She guessed from the sloppy lope that Brad had returned.

"Here you go," Brad said, walking backward through the door. He held an armful of sheets, his hat dangling from his hand.

Sara stopped him, asking, "Did you get pillowcases?"

"Oh," Brad said, surprised. He shook his head. "Sorry, no."

"I think they're on the top floor," Sara said. "Could you get at least four?"

"Yes, ma'am," he answered, setting the sheets down on a table by the door.

Lena crossed her arms as he left. "He's not twelve," she said.

Jeffrey spoke to Lena for the first time since she had entered the morgue, giving her an uncharacteristic, "Shut up."

Lena colored, but she was silent; also out of character.

"The bruising on her chest couldn't really be treated with anything other than Tylenol," Sara continued. "The pelvic fracture could heal on its own. It might explain why she had weight gain recently. It would be hard for her to get around."

Jeffrey asked, "You think the boyfriend was abusing her?"

"Someone was," Sara said, looking over the films again, trying to see if she had missed anything. All the times she had seen Jenny Weaver, Sara had never suspected child abuse. How the child had kept it hidden, and why, Sara did not know. Of course, it wasn't as if Sara ordered X rays for sore throats, Jenny didn't take off her clothes, evidently and Jenny had never taken off her clothes for an examination. Teenage girls were very sensitive about their bodies, and Sara had always slipped her stethoscope under Jenny's shirt to listen to her chest and lungs so the girl would not be embarrassed.

Sara walked over to the table to resume the preliminary examination. Her hands shook slightly as she pulled back the sheet, and Sara was so absorbed in trying to get her hands to stop shaking that she did not notice what she was uncovering.

"Holy shit," Lena said, giving another low whistle.

Jeffrey did not reprimand her this time, though, and Sara understood why. There were small cuts across the girl's body, specifically on her arms and legs. The wounds were at various stages of healing, but some of them looked as recent as the last few days.

"What happened?" Jeffrey asked. "Was she trying to kill herself?"

Sara looked at the slices marking the skin. None of them was across the wrist or in places that would be apparent to anyone who was not looking for something specific. This would at least explain why the girl was wearing a long-sleeved shirt in the middle of summer. Thin rows of very deep cuts lined Jenny's left forearm, starting about three inches from the wrist and where the sleeve might have rolled up. Dark scars indicated that the injuries were a common occurrence. The leg cuts were much deeper, and seemed to have a crisscross pattern to them. Sara could guess from the scarring that the deeper cuts radiated from the knee to the thigh. The girl had done this to herself.