A Faint Cold Fear (19 page)

His jaw worked, and she knew his answer before he even said it. 'Lena.'

Sara suppressed a sigh as she looked out the window. Jeffrey had been worrying about Lena for as long as Sara could remember.

She asked, 'What did she do?' leaving the this time unsaid.

'She didn't do anything,' he said. 'Or maybe she did. I don't know.' He paused, probably thinking it over. 'I think she knew this kid, this Rosen kid. We found her fingerprints on a library book in his apartment.'

'She could have checked it out.'

'No,' he told her. 'We looked at her records.'

'They let you see that?'

'We didn't actually go through the librarians,'

Jeffrey told her, and Sara could only imagine what kinds of strings Jeffrey had pulled to get a look at the library's records. Nan Thomas would have a screaming fit if she ever found out, and Sara would not blame the woman.

Sara suggested, 'Lena could have borrowed the book without anyone knowing.'

'Does Lena strike you as the type of person who would read The Thorn Birds? 'I have no idea,' Sara admitted, though she could not imagine Lena doing something as sedentary as reading, let alone a love story. 'Did you ask her? What did she say?'

'Nothing,' he said. 'I tried to bring her in. She wouldn't come.'

'To the station?'

He nodded.

'I wouldn't come in if you asked me to either.'

He seemed genuinely curious. 'Why?'

'Don't be ridiculous,' she told him, not even bothering to answer. 'You think Lena has something to hide?'

'I don't know.' He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. 'She seemed cagey. When we were talking on the hill after you and Tessa left she seemed to recognize Andy's name. When I asked her, she denied it.'

'Do you remember her reaction when we turned over the body?'

'She wasn't there,' Jeffrey reminded her.

'Right,' Sara remembered.

He said, 'We found something else, too. A pair of women's underwear in his room.'

'Lena's?' Sara asked, wondering why Jeffrey had not told her this before.

He said, 'I'm guessing.'

'What did they look like?'

'Not like what you wear. Small.'

She shot him a look. 'Thanks a lot.'

'You know what I mean,' he said. 'The kind that's thinner in the back.'

Sara guessed, 'A thong?'

'Probably. Silky, dark red, with lace around the legs.'

'That sounds about as much like Lena as The Thorn Birds.'

Jeffrey shrugged. 'You never know.'

'Could they have belonged to Andy Rosen?'

Jeffrey seemed to consider this. 'We can't rule that out, considering what he did to his…' He didn't finish the sentence.

'He could have stolen them from Schaffer.'

'The hair was dark brown,' Jeffrey told her.

'Schaffer's a blonde.'

Sara laughed. 'I wouldn't bet on it.'

Jeffrey was quiet for a beat. 'Lena could have been sleeping with Andy Rosen.'

Sara thought this was unlikely, but with Lena there was no telling.

He said, 'There was this kid there when I tried to bring Lena in. Some little prick who looked like he belonged in high school. Maybe she's seeing him. It looked like they were together.'

'So she's sleeping with Andy Rosen and dating this kid?' Sara shook her head. 'Considering what happened to her a year ago, I don't see Lena playing the field this soon. If ever.' She crossed her arms, leaning against the door. 'Are you sure it's her underwear?'

Jeffrey was quiet, like he was debating whether or not to tell her something.

'What is it?' Sara asked. Then, 'Jeff?'

'There's some… material,' he said and Sara wondered why he was being reticent. Probably his knowing Lena attached a certain taboo; he'd never been shy about this sort of thing before. He said, 'Even if there's enough to run DNA, there's no way in hell Lena will give us a comparison sample. If she'd just give us something to test, we could clear her and this would all be over.'

'If she won't even go into the station, there's no way she'll give blood.'

His voice took on an edge. 'I just want to clear her out of this, Sara. If she won't help herself…'

Immediately Sara thought about the rape kit she had performed on Lena a year ago, but she did not volunteer this information. Something about using the DNA collected during the rape exam to possibly tie Lena to Andy Rosen did not sit right with Sara. The act struck her as a second violation. Lena would see it as a betrayal. Anyone would.

'Sara?'

She shook her head. 'Just tired,' she told him, trying not to remember the night she had collected the rape kit. Lena's body had been so badly damaged that she had needed seven stitches to sew her back together. Because of the drugs Lena had been given, Sara had been forced to go very light on the sedative.

Until Tessa's stabbing, doing Lena's rape kit had been the most horrible event of Sara's entire medical career.

Sara asked, 'What would it prove if Lena did match?

Sleeping with Andy Rosen doesn't mean she had anything to do with his death. Or Tessa's stabbing.'

'Why would she lie about it?'

'Lying doesn't make her guilty.'

'In my experience people only lie when they've got something to hide.'

'I imagine she'd lose her job if she was having sex with a student.'

'She hates Chuck. I doubt she cares whether she keeps her job or not.'

Sara pointed out, 'She's not your biggest fan right now. She may have lied just to spite you.'

'She can't be stupid enough to impede an investigation.

Not on something like this.'

'Of course she can, Jeffrey. She's mad at you, and she's seeing a way to pay you back for kicking her off-'

'I didn't-'

Sara held up her hands to stop him. They had argued this point so many times already that she could already hear the rest of the sentence before he finished.

What it boiled down to was that Jeffrey was angry as hell at Lena and would not admit that most of his anger stemmed from disappointment. Lena's knee-jerk response was to hate Jeffrey back just as blindly. The situation would have been comical if Sara were not caught right in the middle of it.

Sara said, 'Regardless of why, Lena's not going to give you an inch on this. She pretty much proved that when she wouldn't come down to the station.'

'Maybe I didn't approach her quite like I should have,' he allowed, and, judging on past performance, Sara could imagine he had been quite an ass. 'That kid she was with. That boy.'

Sara waited, but he took his time finishing his thought.

'There's something wrong with him.'

'Wrong how?'

'Dangerous,' Jeffrey said. Td bet you ten bucks he's got a record.'

Sara knew better than to take the bet. Any cop worth his salt could recognize an ex-con. That brought her to her next question. 'Do you think Lena knows he's been in trouble before?'

'Who knows what the hell's going on in her head?'

Sara was just as perplexed.

Jeffrey said, 'He pushed me.'

'He pushed you?' Sara asked, certain he meant it figuratively.

'He came up from behind and pushed me.'

'He pushed you?' she repeated, wondering at anyone's having the stupidity to do such a thing. 'Why?'

'He probably thought I pushed Lena down.'

'Did you?'

He looked at her, obviously insulted. 'I put my hand on her arm. She freaked out. Jerked her arm back.'

Jeffrey stared at the road, silent for a moment. 'She was trying so hard to get away she fell on the ground.'

'That sounds like a predictable reaction.'

Jeffrey skipped over her remark. 'This kid, he was ready to take me on. A scrawny little shit, probably weighs less than Tess.' Jeffrey shook his head, but there was something appreciative about the way he spoke.

Not many people challenged him.

Sara asked, 'Why haven't you run his sheet?'

'I don't have his name,' Jeffrey told her. Then, 'Don't worry, I followed them to a coffee shop. He left his cup on the table. I took it for prints.' He smiled.

'Just a matter of time until I know everything there is to know about the punk.'

Sara was certain he would, and she felt more than a little sorry for Lena's white knight.

Jeffrey fell silent again, and Sara stared out the window, counting the crosses that marked traffic accidents on the highway. Some of them had wreaths laid at their bases or photographs of people Sara was glad she could not see. A pink teddy bear propped up against the foot of a small cross made her look ahead, her heart lurching in her chest. The drivers in front of them tapped their breaks, slanted red lights gleaming up ahead. The highway was getting crowded as they got closer to Macon. Jeffrey would take the bypass, but they were bound to get caught up in traffic this time of day.

Jeffrey asked, 'How are your folks?'

'Angry,' she said. 'Angry at me. At you. I don't know.

Mama will barely even talk to me.'

'Has she told you why?'

'She's just worried,' Sara said, but every second that passed with her parents angry at her twisted in Sara's chest. Eddie still would not talk to her, but she did not know if that was because he blamed her or because he could not deal with having both of his girls in crisis.

Sara was beginning to understand just how hard it was to be strong for everyone else around you when all you really wanted to do was curl up into a ball and be comforted yourself.

'They'll be okay in a few days,' Jeffrey soothed, resting his hand on her shoulder. He stroked her neck with his thumb, and she wanted to slide across the seat and put her head on his chest. Something stopped her. Without her permission, her mind kept going back to Lena in the hospital, bruised and battered, dark blood oozing from between her legs where she had been cut so deeply. Lena was a small person to begin with, but her cocky attitude normally made her seem larger than life. Lying on the hospital gurney, hands and feet bleeding through the white bandages the ambulance crew had hastily tied on, Lena had seemed more like a little child than a grown woman. Sara had never seen someone so broken.

In the car Sara felt tears in her eyes. She looked out the window, not wanting Jeffrey to see. He was still stroking her neck, but for some reason his touch no longer soothed.

She said, 'I'm going to try to get some sleep,' and pulled away from him as she leaned against the car door.

The Heartsdale Medical Center was not nearly as impressive as the name implied. Two stories tall, with the morgue in the basement, the hospital was nothing more than a glorified clinic for the college, which stood on the opposite end of Main Street. As usual, the parking lot was empty but for a few cars. Jeffrey pulled up to the main parking lot in front of the emergency room, bypassing the side entrance Sara normally used.

She waited patiently as he backed the car into one of the far spaces.

He put the car in park but left the engine running.

'I need to check in with Frank,' he said, taking out his cell phone. 'Do you mind starting without me?'

'No,' Sara answered, and part of her was relieved to have some time to herself.

Still, she smiled at Jeffrey before getting out of the car. He had known her for over ten years, and she could sense he understood that something was bothering her. Jeffrey did not like leaving things unresolved.

Maybe he was still mad at her about what had happened in the parking deck.

Sara had not really slept during the drive back to Grant. She had been caught in that limbo between sleep and wakefulness, her mind reeling with the events from yesterday. When she did manage to nod off, Sara dreamed of Lena in the hospital last year.

In the kind of horrific twist that only dreams can bring, Sara and Lena had switched places, so that it was Sara on the exam table, her feet in stirrups, her body exposed, as Lena took vaginal swabs and combed Sara's pubic hair for foreign matter. When the black light flickered on to illuminate semen and other body fluids, Sara's lower half had lit up as if it were on fire.

Sara rubbed her arms as she walked across the parking lot, though it was hardly cold. She looked up at the sky, which was dark and forbidding. She whispered, 'It's coming up a storm,' a phrase her Granny Earnshaw had used when they were little.

Sara smiled, her tension eased by the image of her grandmother standing at the kitchen door, hands clasped worriedly to her chest, looking out at the coming storm and telling the children to make sure they all had candles before they went to bed that night.

Inside the emergency room, Sara waved at the night nurse and at Matt DeAndrea, who was filling in for Hare while he was supposed to be on vacation. Not since the summer she started puberty was Sara more glad that her cousin was not around.

'How's your mama and them?' Matt said, giving a standard greeting. He seemed suddenly to realize what this would invite, and his face paled.

'Fine,' Sara said, forcing a smile. 'Everybody's doing just fine. Thanks for asking.'

Neither of them had much to say after that, so Sara walked along the hallway toward the stairs down to the morgue.

Sara had never made the comparison between the morgue and Grady Hospital, but having just spent so much time in Atlanta, the similarities were glaringly obvious. The medical center had been renovated a few years back, but downstairs the morgue looked much as it had when it was first built in the 1930s.

Light blue tile lined the walls, and the floors were a mixture of green and tan linoleum squares. Overhead, the ceiling was splotched with signs of water damage, the recently repaired white patches a sharp contrast against the graying old plaster. The white noise from the compressor over the freezer and the air-conditioning system made a steady hum, something Sara rarely noticed unless she'd been away for a while.

Carlos stood against the porcelain table that was bolted to the floor in the center of the room, his arms crossed over his wide chest. He was a nice kid with swarthy Hispanic looks and a thick accent that Sara had taken some time to get used to. He did not talk much, and when he did, he tended to mumble. Carlos did the shit work, literally and figuratively, and he was very well paid, but Sara felt that she did not know much about him. In the many years Carlos had worked there, he had never said anything personal about himself or complained about the work. Even when there was nothing to do, he always found a chore, sweeping the floors or cleaning the freezer. She was surprised to see him just standing at the table when she entered the morgue. He appeared to have been waiting for her.