Indelible

His gut reaction was to prove them all wrong. Maybe that was the problem – and the root to his attraction. Jeffrey wanted their approval. He wanted people to think he was a good guy, the kind of guy who came from a nice middle-class, God-fearing family that stood on the right side of the law. That seemed like a lost cause now. Sara was looking at him the same way everyone else in Sylacauga did, like he was just as bad as his father.

"Hey," Sara said, sitting down beside him on the steps.

He moved away from her. "How's Jessie?"

"Passed out on the couch," Sara told him, folding her arms around her knees. Her tone was reserved, like they were strangers.

"Is she on something?"

"I think her adrenaline gave out and whatever she took earlier finally caught up with her." She stared at him, seemed to be studying him.

"What?"

"We need to talk."

Dread washed over Jeffrey, but of the thousand things that came to his mind, what she actually said was more shocking than any of them.

"You changed the crime scene."

"What?" He stood up, putting himself between Sara and the crowd on the street. He knew he had done nothing wrong, but still he felt defensive. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"You left the door open."

"The back door? How else were you supposed to get in?"

Sara tucked her chin into her chest, the way she did when she was trying to keep her calm. "The armoire," she said. "You opened the door. You put the shirt back in."

He remembered now, and for the life of him he could not understand his own actions. "I just -" He couldn't find an answer. "I don't know what I was doing. I was upset. It doesn't mean anything."

Sara spoke matter-of-factly. "A man holds a gun to his wife's head, shoots at him, and Robert runs to the armoire, grabs his gun, and shuts the door?"

Jeffrey tried to think of a logical explanation. "He probably shut it without thinking." Even as he spoke, Jeffrey knew he was grasping at straws. The timing didn't work.

Sara stood up, brushing dirt off the back of her pajamas. "I'm not going to be an accomplice to this," she told him, and it sounded like a warning.

"An accomplice?" he repeated, thinking he had heard wrong.

"Changing the crime scene."

"That's ridiculous," he said, heading back inside.

She followed him like she did not trust him alone in the house. "Where are you going?"

"I'll close it back," he answered, walking into the bedroom. He stopped in front of the armoire. The door was already closed.

When he looked at Sara for an explanation, she said, "I didn't close it."

Jeffrey opened the door again and stood back. He took another step back and as they both watched, it closed. He laughed with relief. "See?" He duplicated his actions with the same result. "The floor must be uneven," he explained, testing the floorboards. "When you step back here, it closes."

A flicker of doubt crossed Sara's eyes. "Okay," she said, like she still was not sure.

"What?"

"Was the safe locked?"

He opened the door again, finding a black gun safe on the top shelf. "Combination lock," he said. "He could have left it open. They don't have kids."

She was staring at the dead man on the floor. "I want to sit in on the autopsy."

Jeffrey had somehow forgotten about the body in the room. He turned now, and looked at the corpse. The man's blond hair was matted with blood, partially concealing his face. His bare back was riddled with blood and brain, the laces of his untied te

Jeffrey said, "Let's get out of here," leaving the room.

Sara stopped him in the hallway. "Did you hear me?" she said. "I want to sit in -"

"Why don't you do it yourself?" he interrupted, thinking this would be the only way to shut her up. "They don't have a coroner here. The guy who runs the funeral home does it for a hundred bucks a pop."

"All right," she said, but the guarded look on her face was far from reassuring. Jeffrey knew if she found anything out of place, from a pattern wound to an ingrown toenail, she'd throw it back at him that she was right.

"What do you think you're going to find?" he demanded, then remembering Jessie was in the next room, he lowered his voice. "You think my best friend's a murderer?"

"He already admitted to shooting that man."

Jeffrey walked toward the front door, wanting to get out of the house and away from Sara. Typically, she followed him, unable to let it go.

She put her hands on her hips, her tone the same she probably used to talk to her patients. "Think about their story, Jeffrey."

"I don't have to think about it," he said, but the more Sara talked, the more he did, and he did not like the conclusions his mind was drawing. He finally asked, "Why are you doing this?"

"The time frame doesn't jibe with what we heard in the street."

Jeffrey shut the front door, not wanting their conversation to be overheard. Through the narrow window, he could see the deputies talking to the ambulance driver who had just pulled up.

Sara said, "There was a lag between the scream and the first shot."

He tried to remember the sequence, but could not. Still, he said, "That's not how it happened."

"The shot was a few beats later."

"What's a few beats?"

"Maybe five seconds."

"Do you know how long five seconds is?"

"Do you?"

He saw Hoss's cruiser pull into the street. It was the same damn car he had driven when Jeffrey was a teenager, right down to the peeling sheriff's star on the side. Jeffrey and Robert had washed that car every weekend their junior year as penance for duct-taping a hapless freshman to the water fountain at school.

"All right," Jeffrey told Sara, wanting to get this the hell over with. "Five seconds. That goes with what they said – she screamed, Robert pushed him back, he fired. That could take five seconds."

Sara stared at him, and he did not know if she was going to call him an idiot or a liar. She surprised him by saying, "I honestly can't remember what they said, whether she screamed first or he pushed the guy first." Then, probably just to be a bitch, she added, "You might want to help Robert get that straight before he makes his statement."

Jeffrey watched Hoss talking to his deputies. He was wearing his fishing vest and a beat-up old hat with lures pi

He said, "We didn't hear the second shot until I caught up with you. That's, what, another ten seconds?"

"I don't know. It wasn't immediate."

"Robert could have been looking for his gun."

She surprised him again by conceding, "True."

"Then the next shot was a few seconds later, right?" When she did not respond, he said, "Maybe two or three seconds later?"

"About."

"It could fit," he insisted. "The guy shoots at him, Robert goes to get his gun. It's dark, he can't find it at first. While he's looking for it, he's shot. He's surprised that he's shot, but he still manages to shoot back."

She nodded, but did not seem convinced. Jeffrey knew in his gut there was something else she was holding back, and he was ru

"What?" he said, wanting to shake it out of her. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Just forget it."

"I mean it, Sara. There's something you're not saying. What is it?"

She stared out the window, not answering.

Hoss was still standing at the end of the walk. The ambulance made a low beeping noise as it backed into the driveway. Each beep seemed to heighten Jeffrey's frustration, so that when Sara started to leave the house, Jeffrey grabbed her arm and would not let her go.