CHAPTER 24.

ALEXIS.

MONDAY.

ROLLER COASTER.

On the way back to the sheriff's office, the van was absolutely quiet. Some people leaned against the windows; others just closed their eyes and let their heads hang down.

Alexis stared out at the flat darkness pressing against the gla.s.s. It was punctuated by occasional streaks of light from a pa.s.sing car. Only Bran could make her forget this day. Tonight they had planned to get together to study. After hearing about the search, he had texted, asking if they should cancel, but she needed to see him.

It wasn't just that spending nine hours on your hands and knees was exhausting. The whole day had been a roller coaster. The excitement of finding the mitten, and then later the horror of realizing just what Nick had crawled through. Despite his tough talk, he had almost pa.s.sed out, and Alexis had felt queasy herself when he showed her his stained gloves. Her stomach twisting, she had checked her own, but they seemed to have been in contact with nothing more than dirt.

And then there was the moment when she had gone to her knees in front of the victim's grieving mother and gathered her into her arms. Alexis had reacted out of instinct, an instinct honed by years of experience. The older woman had been crying so hard it was like trying to hold someone in the grip of a seizure, wordless and primal. And the press of the woman's hot, wet cheek against hers, the sound of her ragged wails in her ear, had been all too familiar.

Alexis's mother was bipolar. Some people still called it manic depression. Which was certainly more descriptive. When she was in the grip of the depressive phase, she suffered the blackest of moods. Alexis had lost count of the times she had hidden the scissors and knives, or worried that shoelaces and bathrobe ties might be too tempting, or the times she had held her mother while she cried. Or grabbed her hands when she beat her fists against her own head.

"You are the only reason I even bother to stay alive," her mother had told her during one of her dark times, her face red and twisted and wet from weeping. "If I'm not your mother, then I'm nothing."

That was one of the reasons why Alexis was careful to make sure that no adult ever found out exactly what her home life was like.

For one thing, what if the authorities separated them and her mom killed herself? And for another, who knew what kind of place they might send Alexis to? She had heard enough horror stories about foster care to know that anything was possible.

A few weeks ago her mom had been in a manic phase. A whirling dervish, seeming to thrive without food or sleep. Barefoot despite the cold, she had insisted on blessing people in the park.

But after an involuntary stay in a mental health ward, she had come home with a crumpled brown paper bag holding a new batch of pills. Right now she was on lithium, Neurontin, Celexa, Klonopin, and a couple more drugs whose names Alexis couldn't remember.

The miracle was that so far they seemed to be working.

It wasn't as if her mom were cured. Alexis knew that. Cured was too much to hope for. The doctors never used that word or even the word normal. Instead they said asymptomatic.

Still, it was wonderful to be the kid again. To have her mom cook and clean and ask how school was going. To have her make sense.

Ruby's voice interrupted Alexis's thoughts. "You look very tired."

Alexis turned. Trust Ruby to state the obvious. The girl didn't have any filters. Last week in cla.s.s they had practiced moving injured people. One of the sheriff's deputies had been playing mock patient. Ruby had told him, "You're too fat to lift easily," and not even noticed how the guy winced and tried to suck in his beer belly.

"I am tired," Alexis agreed. She looked at Ruby, really looked. Not just at her bright red hair and milk-pale skin, but at her expression, at how she was chewing her gum faster than seemed humanly possible. The other girl dropped her gaze. Trying to look Ruby straight in the eye was like trying to bring together two magnets with the same polarity. Your eyes just pushed hers away. "You don't look tired at all."

Ruby's face held a small, secret smile. She hardly ever smiled. She really didn't do much with her face. Unlike most girls, you couldn't guess what she was thinking-or what she wanted you to think she was thinking-by looking at her expression.

"It was an interesting day. Seeing that double perimeter. And I've read about that casting material, but I've never seen it used."

Alexis only nodded. She hadn't paid that much attention to either of those things, but she knew if she showed even a tiny bit of interest, Ruby would talk nonstop. When the van pulled up at the sheriff's office, Bran's small brown Honda was already waiting in the parking lot. After calling a good-bye to Ruby and putting her pack in his trunk, Alexis climbed into the pa.s.senger seat.

"It's so good to see you," she said. "Today was tough." Tears stung her nose. "Really tough." She waited for him to offer sympathetic words or pull her into a hug.

"Worse than yesterday?" He sounded skeptical.

"Way worse. I mean, for one thing, this girl was murdered." This morning, Mitch.e.l.l had told them that even though Mariana had had to have surgery to fix her broken leg, the doctors still expected her to make a full recovery. "Today Nick actually ended up crawling through the victim's blood." She shivered.

"Oh." Bran started the car, looking straight ahead. "You still need to get your books, right?"

"Right. And maybe we could stop at Mickey D's?" She hadn't eaten much of her sandwich at lunch.

"Sure. Whatever." His voice was a monotone.

She finally focused on him. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

Thinking back to how he had acted last night, she made herself say it. "Are you mad at me, Bran?"

It took him a half beat to answer her, and during that s.p.a.ce of time, some part of Alexis died. When he turned his head and his eyes finally met hers, they were blindly innocent.

"Mad? Of course I'm not mad." He turned back to the street, signaled, and then pulled into the order lane of the nearby McDonald's.

Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he wasn't mad. But he was definitely something.

He ordered a double hamburger, large fries, and a large chocolate shake. Alexis mentally counted her money and decided to get two things from the dollar menu. He didn't protest when she dropped the two dollars into his lap. He didn't do anything, including look at her. Or talk to her. All he did was pull forward to the pickup window.

Alexis tried again. "But it sort of seems like you're not here. Like you're thinking about something else. You were the same way last night."

The cashier slid open the window and Bran handed over the money, then he gave Alexis the bag. "I've got a lot of things on my mind."

"Like what?" She kept her voice bright as she half unwrapped his burger, releasing the smell of warm grease, and handed it to him.

"Things." He pushed the word at her. "Why do you have to keep asking? Can't you see I don't want to talk about it?"

It felt as if he had slapped her. "Maybe you should just take me home, then."

"Maybe that's a good idea."

Alexis hadn't known Bran long, but she had thought she knew him. But the guy she knew wouldn't act like this. They rode in silence. Alexis tried to keep her breathing quiet, even as it hitched in her chest. She left her food in the bag. She wasn't hungry anymore. Bran's hamburger was in his lap, but he wasn't eating, either. A week ago they had fed each other french fries.

When he stopped in front of her building, she turned toward him. But he kept his hands on the wheel, his gaze on the road. "Good-bye," she said. In her own ears, it sounded like a question.

Bran still didn't move, didn't look at her. "Good-bye." It sounded like an answer. An answer she didn't want to hear.

She managed to hold back her tears until she put her key in the lock of her apartment. But as she turned the handle, she started to sob. Then the door swung open into blackness.

"Mom?" she called out, holding her breath.

No answer. But what was that in the far corner of the living room?

"Mom?"

The McDonald's bag fell from her suddenly boneless hands.

CHAPTER 25.

PAUL.

TUESDAY.

IT'S ALL BLOOD.

Detective Paul Harriman sat in the observation room overlooking the autopsy suite. Below him was the dead girl, the medical examiner, a pathology a.s.sistant, and a criminalist from the forensic division.

"Can you hear me okay?" Medical examiner Thomas-Tommy, except when he was testifying in court-Chapman looked at him over the edge of his surgical mask. Only on TV did pathologists talk with uncovered mouths over victim's bodies, spraying tiny drops of DNA-containing spit.

"Loud and clear." Paul took another slug of his twenty-ounce mocha with four shots of espresso. Now it was time to see what Lucy Hayes could tell them. IDing her had been straightforward. Her wallet was still in her purse, and the picture on her driver's license matched the dead girl. Maybe other counties did it differently, but here you would never have the family ID the victim. Too hard for everyone.

Lucy lay faceup on the stainless steel autopsy table. Both hands-the one with the mitten and the one without-were covered with brown paper bags, tied at the forearm. She was still wearing her coat, sweater, and bra, but they had been cut up the front and back by the paramedics so they could examine the knife wound and see if there were others. If Lucy had made it to the ER alive, all her clothes would have been removed there.

If, if, if. There were no more ifs for Lucy.

Tommy pressed a floor pedal and began to dictate into the transcribing machine. He reeled off the facts of what had once been Lucy: her race, s.e.x, age, hair color, eye color. "Decedent is wearing a thigh-length dark blue Columbia parka, a black V-neck sweater, jeans, and calf-length black boots." As he spoke, the criminalist snapped photos.

After removing the bag, Tommy carefully examined her bare hand. "I don't see anything under her nails, but I'm still going to collect both sets," he told Paul. First he swabbed them, then he clipped them, putting the clippings into a test tube. With luck, there had been a struggle and she had scratched tiny fragments of tissue from her killer's skin.

Paul leaned forward to speak into the mic. "How long do you think we'll have to wait for test results?"

"Two days, three at the outside," Tommy said. Before moving on to her other hand, he changed gloves and got a new test tube so he wouldn't transfer DNA from one part of her body to another. Later he would take a blood sample so Lucy's own DNA could be ruled out from whatever the crime lab found. Her single mitten went into its own evidence bag.

Next Tommy and the a.s.sistant took off Lucy's clothes, rolling her from side to side. The back of her clothing was soaked with blood, and Tommy noted the holes in her jacket and shirt from the knife. The a.s.sistant put each item in its own paper bag, stapled it, and labeled it with the case number.

Her clothes would go to the crime lab to be examined for trace evidence, particularly touch DNA. Back when Paul started, DNA tests had required a bloodstain at least the size of a dime. Now all it took was about a hundred cells-the same amount left behind in a single fingerprint. And if you happened to be dragging someone, you were leaving behind far more than a hundred cells. Paul just hoped the killer hadn't been wearing gloves. Of course, the lab might find DNA from three people: the victim, the perpetrator, and the boyfriend. The last two of which might be the same thing.

The sad truth was, the first place you looked for murder suspects was among friends and family.

Before Tommy opened up the body, he X-rayed it. Paul hoped they might find the tip of the knife broken off inside her, but there was nothing unusual on the films.

When Tommy turned on the saw and made the Y-incision in her torso, Paul didn't look away. Didn't even blink. The only time he was no good at remaining detached was when the victim was a baby.

None of them was very good at that.

Fifteen minutes later a voice behind him made him jump. "Pretty girl. What a waste." It was his partner, Rich Meeker, dapper in black pants, a dark gray silky shirt, and a charcoal tie. Trust Rich to look past the blood and bones to see only the surface.

Yesterday while Paul had been with SAR, Rich had been a.s.signing officers to search nearby Dumpsters, canva.s.s the neighbors, and locate any neighboring security cams. The officers had knocked on dozens of doors to ask what anyone saw, heard, suspected. A couple had worked the perimeter to see if any of the onlookers had noticed anything the night before. One cop was even now hunkered down in a civilian's house that overlooked the vacant lot, watching in case the killer returned.

"Tommy tell you the cause of death yet?" Rich asked.

"I can hear you, you know." Tommy looked up at them. "I won't know for sure until I take off the top of her skull, but I don't think the head injury was fatal. The knife wound seems to have been what killed her. It perforated her right lung. Ultimately, I'm guessing she died from a combination of blood loss, hemothorax, and hemopericardium."

"I don't even know what those last two words mean," Rich complained.

"It's all blood, basically." Tommy pointed at the body. "She bled on the outside and the inside. We found blood in the pleural cavity. That's the s.p.a.ce between the lungs and the chest wall. And we found more blood in her pericardium, which is the sac around the heart. That blood stopped her heart from working well, and eventually the combination of all three killed her."

"What can you tell us about the knife?" Paul asked.

"She was stabbed once in the right side of the back. The wound is about five-eighths of an inch by four inches deep."

"So that's how big the knife was?" Rich measured a s.p.a.ce with his hands.

"It's not that simple, unfortunately. The actual weapon could be longer if the killer didn't push it all the way in. And if she was moving, the weapon could actually be shorter than the wound. Since the margins of the wound are fairly ragged, I'm guessing she probably was moving. I'm not seeing any serrated abrasions next to the wound, so I don't think we're looking at a knife with a saw back. My best guess is that this one was thrust to its full length. In the US, most knives are single-edged blades, so normally you would see a wound with one acute angle and one blunted angle. But on this one, both angles look squared off."

"What does that mean?" Paul was having trouble following.

"Some knives have a short segment at the top where both edges are squared off. So it could be that the knife was pushed all the way in. One end was squared off by the noncutting edge and the other by the guard."

Paul tried to imagine it. "So he must really have pushed hard to get it so far up the blade."

Tommy shrugged. "Actually, once the skin is penetrated, you don't need any additional force to penetrate the underlying subcutaneous tissue or muscle."

"Like b.u.t.tah," Rich said, deadpan.

Tommy was picking up the saw again, ready to go for the top of the head. Paul turned to Rich. "So what have you learned so far?"

"She was at a bar Sunday night around midnight, and it looks like she walked there. She even left her scarf behind. It matches the mittens. Bartender says she's a semiregular. Not really for the drinks, but for the karaoke." Rich offered him a grin. "You're going to like this. When she came in last night, she found her so-called boyfriend, Cooper Myers, already there-kissing another girl, Jasmine O'Dell. Lucy dumped their beers on their heads." He mimed the motion. "Big scene. The bartender threw all three of them out. He says they stood outside yelling at each other and then they all left, each walking in a different direction."

"Two suspects already," Paul said. This was starting to sound like an open-and-shut case.

"My money's on the boyfriend. He got caught, and he got mad. Plus women don't usually tend to carry knives." Rich tilted his head. "When this wraps up, you want to go see what Mr. Myers has to say for himself?"

Three hours later Myers had had plenty to say for himself. Just none of it useful.

Paul had begun by making small talk about sports and school, even the dogs they each had as children. Anything to build rapport. Then, while Rich watched a video feed from another room, Paul had Myers describe what had happened, over and over, without interrupting. He looked for discrepancies, overexplanations, and outright lies.

The only problem was, he hadn't spotted any. Which was when he had brought in Rich, the pit bull to his sheepdog. Rich would never smack a suspect, but the suspect didn't need to know that. In search of the truth, you were allowed to tell all kinds of lies.

Now Rich was pacing the length of the interrogation room, which held nothing but a plain wooden table, a wooden chair, and a rolling office chair. Myers had the wooden chair, so he couldn't go anyplace. Sensing the moment was right, Paul rolled his chair up so close he could practically kiss the kid. Close enough he could smell the sharp stench of his sweat. He had been crying earlier, and now he swiped his nose with the back of his hand.

Paul kept his voice soft. "You must have been angry that she had embarra.s.sed you in front of everyone. Because I would have been. At times like that, I see red. It's like things happen and I'm not even the one who is doing them."

He was offering two excuses in one, but Myers just shook his head. "I didn't do anything to her."

"Why are you even bothering?" Rich slapped his hand on the table. "We've got a dozen witnesses who'll say they saw those two fighting, both in the bar and outside of it."