He wanted to curse roundly. No wonder she was messed up. Small towns and their secrets. "Were there any more cases like yours, at the time?"

"You mean, did they look for the man who did it," she interpreted. "Yes, they did. But he wasn't known locally. He didn't leave a trail that anyone could follow. Even if he had, my grandmother convinced the police chief at the time to bury the file."

"That was stupid."

"Yes, it was," she agreed. "He might still be doing it, somewhere."

"If he's still alive, he probably is," he agreed coldly. "Men who do inappropriate things to children don't ever stop."

It was worse than he knew, but she didn't talk about it to anyone outside her family. She felt dirty when she discussed it.

He saw her discomfort. "Grace, it wasn't your fault."

"Everybody says that," she bit off. "But he said it was! He said it was because I wore shorts and halter tops and...!"

"G.o.d in heaven, what sort of normal man is tempted by a child, whatever she wears?" he exploded.

That made her feel better. She searched his angry face. "I don't suppose normal men would be," she conceded.

He made an effort to calm his temper. It hurt him that a grown man could have approached a child that way, especially Grace. "Have you ever talked about it?"

"Only to Dr. Coltrain."

So that was it. That explained her relationship with the redheaded doctor. He'd been her confessor. "I'll bet he gave your grandmother h.e.l.l about covering it up."

She managed a smile. "He did. But she gave it right back to him. She said it wasn't anything I couldn't get over." That was a joke, but he wouldn't know.

He nodded. "Most women come to terms with it, eventually. Counseling helps."

"So they say."

His eyes narrowed. "You don't go out much, do you?"

She shook her head. "I told you. I don't like being touched."

He pursed his lips, remembering the growing excitement of the kiss they'd shared earlier. "I'm working on that," he drawled.

She laughed, surprised, delighted, by his att.i.tude. He accepted her limitations without anger, without question. It was the first time she'd felt she could trust a man closer than arm's length.

"You're a nice man," she commented.

His eyebrows arched. "Nice? I'm extraordinary!"

She laughed and started to reply when his pager sounded.

He pulled it from his belt and read it, grimacing. "d.a.m.n." He got up and went to the desk where he'd placed his cell phone. He punched a number into it and put it to his ear. "Grier," he said.

Someone spoke to him. He looked solemn. He nodded. "Yes, I can do that. When? All right. I'll meet you there. Better call Marquez. Fine."

He snapped the phone shut and glanced toward Grace. "I have to go. The medical examiner's starting the autopsy on the child. I need to be present. There'll be trace evidence to secure, in addition to the information the autopsy will give us."

She gasped. "You have to watch?!"

"It isn't something I look forward to, but yes, I do occasionally need to watch. We gather forensic evidence while it's going on. The chain of evidence is important. If we break one link, if we ever catch this SOB, we won't be able to convict him."

"Oh. I see." She was picturing the child's body, sliced and broken and beaten. She swallowed down a wave of nausea.

He bent and brushed his mouth gently over her soft lips. "At least you're still in one piece, Grace," he said quietly. "Improper touching is unpleasant, certainly. But what happened to this child was infinitely worse. You were lucky. You didn't die."

Lucky. She would have laughed, but he wouldn't have understood. She'd misled him. She had only herself to blame. "I suppose I was lucky," she agreed. She was still alive. That was lucky.

"Want me to carry you down the hall before I leave?" he asked. "I may be late."

She smiled. "It's okay. I have a cane that Miss Turner found for me. I'll be fine. I'm sorry you have to see that."

"I've seen worse," he said flatly, and he was remembering things he wished he could forget. "Sleep well."

"I could go home," she began.

He gave her a speaking glance. "You and the coyote don't get along. You'd better stay here for a day or two, until you're fit for battle." He grinned, and winked at her, as he went out.

She tingled all over. He wanted her in his house, in his life. They both knew she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, but he liked her here. She could have floated. Life wasn't bad, all of a sudden. It was sweet and heady and full of hope.

THE MEDICAL EXAMINER, Jack Peters, was doing the autopsy. He was a forensic pathologist, and widely known in law enforcement circles for his attention to detail. His forensic investigator observed. The investigator was someone that Garon knew from another case, last year. Alice Mayfield Jones had worked as a crime scene technician for a long time before she took the courses that would allow her to work as an investigator for the medical examiner's office.

"Well, if it isn't one of the Grier boys," Alice murmured dryly. Her short, dark hair was under a cap, and part of her face was covered by a mask, but her shimmery blue eyes were unforgettable.

"How many of the Grier boys do you know, Jones?" he chided.

"Your brother Cash worked out of the D.A.'s office here," she recalled. "He was a lot cooler than you are."

"I can see that he wears his heart on his sleeve," the M.E. replied dryly, giving Garon a wry look.

"No. Cooler!" Alice corrected. "His brother wore a ponytail and an earring."

"h.e.l.l will freeze over before you see me wearing an earring," Garon obliged.

Marquez disguised a chuckle as a cough.

Alice glanced at him over the autopsy table. "Do you wear an earring, Sergeant. Marquez? It would go nicely with your hair. Something dangly and un.o.btrusive..."

"If you don't shush, Jones, you'll be wearing one through your lips," the M.E. told her firmly. "Shall we begin?"

He drew the sheet off the small body. Garon had to grit his teeth to keep from cursing. He noticed that his companions were feeling something similar. There were no more jokes. This was deadly serious.

The M.E. pulled down his microphone and began describing the patient, from her height and weight and age to the stark recital of her wounds and the damage they did. While he worked, Jones photographed the body in all stages of the autopsy. She'd already taken the sheet and body bag that had covered the victim downstairs to the crime lab.

With a slight movement of his hand, he covered the child's face with a cloth after Jones had photographed it. "It's easier like this," he said, faintly sheepish. He'd done so many autopsies that they hardly bothered him, but he had a daughter this age and this job was painful.

He made the initial "Y" incision and Jones handed him a pair of cutters to sever the rib cage with, so that he had access to the soft tissues inside the body.

Garon could see for himself what the knife the perpetrator used had done to her small, thin body. Her internal organs were destroyed, from her lungs to her liver and intestines. The cuts were done with some force, as if the attacker had been in a rage.

"Were these wounds pre or postmortem?" Garon asked quietly.

"Pre," the M.E. said curtly. "She was tortured. You can tell from the bleeding. If they were postmortem, they wouldn't have bled. The heart stops pumping at the moment of death."

"You should watch more television, Grier," Jones piped. "They show all this stuff on the forensic shows."

"Don't get me started," Peters snarled at her. "All that high tech gadgetry, millions of dollars worth of equipment, and look what I'm working with!" he exclaimed, nodding around him at aged gurneys and an old porcelain sink and a microscope that seemed to be patched with gray duct tape. "What I wouldn't give for just one of those computers...!"

"They did give you a super investigator, though," Jones reminded him. "And I'm much better looking than that woman on TV who plays the M.E.'s a.s.sistant..."

"Stop while you still have work," Peters muttered.

They cataloged the evidence, placing tissue from under her fingernails in one evidence bag, and swabs from her genital area into another.

"With any luck at all, DNA will catch him," Garon said tautly.

"Only if the perp's DNA is on file," Marquez interjected.

"It's amazing to me," the M.E. commented, "how many molesters aren't in any database. What gets reported is just the tip of the iceberg."

"That's often the case," Marquez agreed.

Finally the ordeal was over and the M.E. readied the body for pickup by the funeral home.

"Poor kid," the M.E. remarked. "And her poor parents. I hope the mortician's good at his job."

Jones rolled the victim away while Marquez and Garon spoke with the M.E.

"I'll send this downstairs to the crime lab," he told them, indicating the evidence bags. "Unless you want to do it?"

Garon shook his head. "I've initialed all the vials that have swabs. Marquez can pick them up when you finish and put them in his property room at San Antonio P.D. for safekeeping."

Marquez nodded. "We'll take good care of everything."

"Just make sure somebody signs for it."

"You'd better believe it," he said. "If we catch the miserable excuse for a human being who did this, I don't want him to walk on a breach of the chain of evidence."

"When will you know something about the DNA?" Garon asked the M.E.

"Get Jones to sweet talk the evidence technicians downstairs," the M.E. suggested. "She has pull."

"I bribe them," she remarked, overhearing them. "I can make eclairs. The head tech is crazy about them. I used to work with him. I know his weaknesses!"

They laughed. It was a nice break from the somber atmosphere of the autopsy. Humor was how they coped with the horrible sights they carried home with them. It kept them from giving in to the pain. They were the victims' advocates. They had to be able to do the job.

"I'll get this report written up sometime tomorrow," Peters told the men. "You can call and make sure it's ready. But I can tell you, based on what I've seen, that the child died of asphyxiation. The knife wounds would have been fatal, but they weren't the primary cause of death."

"You're sure she was asphyxiated?" Marquez asked.

The M.E. pulled away the cloth over the child's face and lifted one of her eyelids. The eye under it was blue. Probably it had been a soft blue, full of hope...

"See these little hemorrhages?" Peters asked, indicating the small red dots in the white of the eye. There were more in the skin of her face. "They're capillaries that ruptured due to sudden, drastic pressure on the neck. We call the condition petechial hemorrhages. They're a hallmark of strangulation. I'm guessing, due to the amount of skin tissue I found under her nails, that she fought for her life. Her attacker will have scratches all over his hands from her attempt to free herself."

Marquez nodded, knowing that it was unlikely they'd find a suspect before those scratches healed and faded away. "We use similar techniques in law enforcement to subdue dangerous perpetrators; the bar arm hold and the carotid hold."

"I know," the M.E. replied. "They collapse the carotid artery and induce unconsciousness. I get a victim of it occasionally. Usually kids practicing wrestling moves on each other without supervision. If it isn't done right, it can be fatal."

"Don't remind me," Marquez sighed. "We try everything else first, to subdue a lawbreaker. But sometimes everything else doesn't work, and our own lives are in danger."

"I hope you can find the person who did this," Peters said, indicating the child.

"We've got to find him," Garon said simply. "He'll do it again."

GRACE INSISTED on going home the next morning. Thanks to the quick treatment Garon had given her sprain, she was walking with barely a limp. She had to go to work or she wouldn't be able to pay her bills. She didn't want to tell him that. He wouldn't understand her sort of poverty. From what she'd heard people say about his brother Cash, she knew the family was wealthy.

Garon looked oddly relieved when she asked him to drop her by her house. He was having second thoughts. He'd spent a long, sleepless night thinking about how sweet it was to kiss Grace, and it had left him irritable. He wasn't going to risk getting involved with her. Never again, he told himself.

She was oddly disappointed that he took it so easily, even smiling as they finished breakfast. Maybe he would have kissed any woman he'd brought home. Or maybe he just felt sorry for her. He'd guessed a little of her past. He probably thought he was helping her adjust to men.

Her own thoughts were confusing her. She got into the car with him without a word, waving at Miss Turner. All the way to her house, she stared out the window without speaking.

He let her out at her front door. "Don't chase coyotes," he said firmly through the window.

She gave him an indignant look. "Are you a wildlife advocate? I won't hurt him unless he hurts my cat."

He laughed in spite of himself. "If you need us, call."

"You can do the same," she told him pertly, and grinned.

That grin made him feel warm inside. He hated it. "That'll be the day," he muttered, throwing up a hand as he pulled out of the driveway.

She watched him drive off with a sinking feeling. Things would never be the same again. He shouldn't have touched her.

He was thinking the same thing. Which was why he phoned Jaqui Jones, Mrs. Tabor's niece, and told her he'd be at the party the next night, which was Friday.

AS CASH HAD HINTED, the founding families of Jacobsville weren't in attendance at the party. Only a few obvious outsiders turned up. Garon felt oddly out of place with these people. Especially with Jaqui, who rubbed against him at every opportunity, almost panting with desire. He didn't like public displays of affection, and it showed in his face.

She laughed breathily. "You're an odd one," she told him as they sipped c.o.c.ktails beside the buffet table. "Don't you find me desirable?"

"You must know you're beautiful," he said easily. He smiled. "But I work at a conservative job, and I'm uncomfortable with blatant invitations."

Her eyebrows went up. "And I took you for an unconventional free spirit," she purred.

"Looks deceive," he said, lifting his gla.s.s to toast her.