The scrape, because the skin had been scraped, was roughly the size of a thumbnail, deeper at one end, trailing off like a comet at the other. She understood why Ingle had dismissed the mark. It looked like the sort of accidental injury that happened all of the time. You rubbed your neck against something sharp. You scratched an itch a little too deeply. There would be pain, but not much. Later on, you would ask your husband or wife to look at it because you had no idea why your neck was hurting.

But there was more to this particular injury than an itch. The scrape was clearly meant to obscure a wound. And not just a wound, but a puncture. The circumference of the hole was roughly a quarter the size of a drinking straw. Sara immediately thought of the awl in a Swiss army knife. The round, pointed tool was ideal for punching holes in leather. Her father used a similar device called a counterpunch to sink the heads of nails in fine carpentry work.

When Sara pressed against the puncture, a watery, dark brown liquid wept out.

Ingle asked, “Is that fat?”

“Fat would be more rubbery and white. This is cerebrospinal fluid,” Sara said. “If I’m right, the killer used a metal tool to rupture her spinal cord. He sliced the nerves of the brachial plexus to immobilize the arms.”

“Hold on a minute.” The practiced calm had left Ingle’s tone. “Why would anybody wanna paralyze this poor little girl?”

Sara knew exactly why, because she had seen this kind of damage before. “So she couldn’t fight back while he raped her.”

Grant County—Tuesday

5

Jeffrey walked down the main college drive toward the front gates. Rain blew sideways under his umbrella. The sky had broken open while he was in the dean’s office receiving a lecture on optics. Kevin Blake was a walking encyclopedia of corporate double-speak, whether he was taking a 10,000-foot view, steering the ship, thinking outside the box, or advocating a holistic approach.

Translated into English, the dean wanted to release a rah-rah, go-team statement about moving past the tragic accident in the woods and helping the student body embark on a healing journey. Jeffrey had made it clear that he wasn’t yet prepared to make that journey. He had asked for the week. Blake had given him until the end of the day. There was not much else to say after that. Jeffrey’s choices were limited. He could walk in the rain to cool down or he could throw Blake out the window.

Walking had narrowly won out, despite the deluge that had started pouring down while they were back in the woods waiting for the ambulance. Now, Jeffrey was halfway to the gates and his socks were already soaked through. The heavy police-issue umbrella was wearing a divot into his shoulder. He gripped tight to the handle. Four hours had passed since that moment in the woods, and his hands still could not shake the jarring memory of bone breaking inside the girl’s chest. Jeffrey wasn’t used to taking orders, but everything Sara had told him to do, everything they had done together, had saved a life.

Whether that lifespan was counted down in hours, days or decades remained to be seen.

The girl’s name was Rebecca “Beckey” Caterino. She was nineteen years old. She was the single child of a widowed father. She was majoring in Environmental Chemistry. She might never wake up from surgery after what was to all appearances a tragic accident.

The accident part was the source of Jeffrey’s disagreement with Blake. No matter Sara’s SLFs, TBIs or BLTs, Jeffrey wasn’t right with the girl landing on her back. Add to that the troubling phone call he had gotten from Caterino’s father. The man had arrived at the hospital within thirty minutes of his daughter. He had relayed some medical information that Jeffrey needed Sara to interpret. The upshot was that there was no way Beckey Caterino had managed to turn herself over in the woods. Either she had fallen on her back or someone had put her there.

Jeffrey couldn’t quite articulate why he believed the latter was a possibility. None of the evidence pointed to foul play. But he had done this job long enough to know that sometimes your gut could see better than your eyes.

He ran through the timeline he’d put together. Caterino’s roommates said she left around five. The 911 call had come in an hour later. The student was a frequent runner. Jeffrey had looked up the stats. A woman in Caterino’s age group could generally do a twelve-minute mile. Assuming she ran straight to IHOP and didn’t take a detour or stop, the mile and a half run would’ve taken eighteen minutes.

That left forty-two minutes for something bad to happen.

If Caterino had been targeted, then the next step would be determining who would want to hurt her. Was there an old boyfriend who was angry with her for cutting things off? Or was the opposite scenario the case, where an old boyfriend had a new girlfriend who wanted to erase the past? Did Caterino argue with a roommate? Was there an academic rival? Was there an obsessed professor who didn’t like being told no?

Jeffrey had sent Frank to feel out Chuck Gaines, the walking joke of a campus chief of security. Matt Hogan was interviewing everyone in Caterino’s dorm. Brad Stephens was checking on Leslie Truong, the woman who had found Caterino in the woods. Lena was talking to Dr. Sibyl Adams. By coincidence, Lena’s sister was one of Caterino’s professors. Sibyl had offered to come in early that morning to go over Caterino’s Organic Chemistry paper.

Jeffrey wasn’t sure the girl would be capable of delivering anything anytime soon. Sara had directed the ambulance to take Caterino to the closest trauma center, which was in Macon. The Heartsdale Medical Center was barely equipped to handle scrapes and bruises. When Jeffrey had asked Sara for a prognosis, she had been almost non-responsive. She was furious with Lena for not finding a pulse, focusing all her anger onto the young cop in a way that should’ve brought Jeffrey relief.

For once, he was not the one on the receiving end of Sara’s sharp tongue.

Jeffrey stepped aside so that a car could pass. He walked through the open gates of the university. Main Street stretched out ahead of him. The rain was hitting the ground so hard that it bounced two feet off the asphalt. The police station was on his left. Up the hill on his right, the Heartsdale Children’s Clinic sat like a monument to bad 1950s architecture.

High Penitentiary was the best way to describe the bricked-up style. There was nothing on the outside that would indicate children were welcome. The windows were narrow. The plastic overhang turned any natural light a sallow brown. A glass-brick octagon swelled out like a boil on the end. This was the waiting room. During the summer, the temperature inside could soar into the nineties. Dr. Barney, the owner of the clinic, insisted the heat helped patients sweat out whatever was ailing them. Sara vehemently disagreed, but Dr. Barney had been her own pediatrician before he’d become her boss. She had a difficult time openly challenging him.

The man had no idea how lucky he was.

Jeffrey climbed the steep slope of the drive. Sara’s silver Z4 turbo was in the lot on the side of the building. She had it parked at a showroom angle that looked not just directly at the police station, but at the front doors, because castrating Jeffrey with a knife could only happen once, but she could slap him in the face with her $80,000 convertible every single time he left work.

Speaking of castration, Tessa Linton was standing beneath the narrow overhang outside the side door to the clinic. She was dressed in cut-off jean shorts and a tight long-sleeved shirt with the Linton and Daughters Plumbing logo across her ample chest. As usual, Tessa’s long, strawberry blonde hair was spiraled onto the top of her head. Jeffrey tried a smile. When that didn’t work, he offered her the benefit of his umbrella.

He said, “Long time.”

Tessa stared blankly into the street.

Of all the people in town, Jeffrey had assumed that Tessa would be the most understanding about his transgression. She was not a woman without a past. She was not a woman without a present, either. The streets of Grant County were lined with hearts that Tessa Linton had broken. The two of them had clocked each other as kindred spirits the first time Sara had brought Jeffrey home to meet her family. Tessa had teasingly warned him about breaking her big sister’s heart. Jeffrey had teased back that it’s not cheating if it’s a different woman every time. They had joked like that for years. Then Sara had caught Jeffrey in the act. Then Tessa had slashed the tires on his Mustang.

Jeffrey asked, “Is Sara okay? We had a rough morning.”

“My father is on his way to pick me up.”

Jeffrey warily eyed the street. He offered Tessa his umbrella. “You can just leave it by the door.”

She crossed her arms over her chest.

Jeffrey watched sheets of rain pound the parking lot. Water cascaded from the slim overhang. The minute Tessa stepped out, she would be drenched. Jeffrey should’ve left her to the elements, but chivalry won out. And he doubted the umbrella would be here when he got back.

Tessa asked, “How’s the old Colton place working out for you?”

Jeffrey was going to ask her how she knew he’d bought a house, but then he realized the entire town knew. “It’s got good bones. I’m going to remodel the kitchen. Throw some paint on the walls.”