Indelible

He cleared his throat before asking, "What are you going to say today?"

"What do you want me to say?" she asked. "Or are you going to threaten me again?"

"I shouldn't have done that."

"No, you shouldn't have," she told him, her anger coming back in sharp focus. "I'll tell you this right now, between the way your mother talked to me last night and your threats, I could leave right now and never look back."

He looked down at the floor, and she could feel his shame without seeing it. His voice caught as he tried to speak, and he cleared his throat before he could manage, "I've never hit a woman in my life."

Sara waited.

"I'd cut off my own hands before I did anything like that," he told her, his jaw working as he obviously tried to fight the emotions welling up inside. "I watched my daddy beat my mama every day of my life. Sometimes she pissed him off, sometimes he did it just because he could." He kept his face turned away from her. "I know you don't have any reason to believe me, but I would never hurt you."

When Sara did not answer, he asked, "What did my mother say to you last night?"

Sara was too embarrassed to repeat it. "It doesn't matter."

"It does," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I brought you here to this…this place." He chanced a look at her, and she could see his eyes were bloodshot. "I just wanted you to see…" He stopped. "Hell, I don't know what I wanted you to see. Who I really am, I guess. Maybe you're seeing that now. Maybe this is who I really am."

She felt sorry for him, and then she felt stupid for doing so.

He pulled out the chair Nell had vacated, dragging it a few feet from the table before he sat. "Bobby wouldn't talk to me this morning."

Sara waited for the rest.

"I walked in the room and he was getting dressed to go home." Jeffrey paused, and she sensed rather than saw his feelings of helplessness. "I told him we needed to talk and he just said no. Just like that, 'No,' like he has something to hide."

"Maybe he does."

He tapped his fingers on the table.

"Was Jessie with him?"

"No. She wasn't even awake yet when I dropped by the house to check on her."

Sara chewed her lip, debating whether or not to tell him what she had seen.

"Go ahead," he said. "Go ahead and say whatever it is that I'm not seeing." He slammed his palm against the table, frustrated. "Jesus, I'm not doing this on purpose, Sara. No matter how many years have passed, he's still my best friend. It's not exactly easy for me to be a cop right now."

Sara took a deep, calming breath. She had flinched when he hit the table, and her first response had been to get up and leave. Just because he came from a violent family did not mean Jeffrey was a violent man, but she could not help but see him differently now. His broad shoulders and well-muscled body, which she had once found so attractive, only served to remind her of how much stronger than her he was.

He must have sensed this, because he moderated his tone. "Please don't look at me like that."

"I just -"

When she said nothing, he prompted, "What?"

Sara tucked her chin into her chest, not ready to have this conversation. She directed him back toward the problem at hand, saying, "I want to see Robert's gunshot wound again."

"Why?"

"I'm not sure, but…" she began, but even as she said it, she was sure. "There was a sear mark at the bottom of the wound."

"You're not sure?"

"I don't want to be, but I am."

He gave a humorless laugh. "He kept covering it with his hand."

"He used the shirt to stanch the blood."

"Did he let you see the shirt?"

She shook her head. If the gun had been held at contact range, the sear mark as well as soot would be on the shirt.

He said, "They probably threw it away at the hospital."

"Or he did."

"Or he did," Jeffrey conceded. He shook his head again. "If he'd talk to me, try to explain what'd happened…"

"What are we going to do?"

He kept shaking his head. "Why won't he talk to me?"

Sara did not volunteer the obvious answer.

He said, "Luke Swan could have been going for him. His body was only a few feet away."

"Probably three or four feet."

"Robert pushed him," Jeffrey said. "Swan would have been crouched or on his knees."

"Could have been."

She could hear the strain in his voice as he tried to explain it all away. "Swan could have heard Robert getting his gun. He moved toward him. Maybe he held his gun up and in front of him." Jeffrey illustrated, holding out his hand, his fingers in the shape of a gun. "He shot Robert, then Robert shot him."

Sara tried to see the holes in his theory. "It's possible."

His relief was palpable. "Let's see what the autopsy says, okay? We'll just keep this to ourselves until then. The autopsy will show what happened."

"Did you ask if I could sit in?"

"Hoss wants you to do the exam."

"All right."

"Sara…"

"I'm already packed," she said, standing. "As soon as it's finished, I want to leave." Then, to make herself clear, she said, "I want to go home."

Chapter Ten

1:32 P.M.

The ringing telephone grated like nails on a blackboard. Sara's hearing started to play tricks on her, the ringing fading in and out like a retreating police car. To pass the time, she would count the seconds between rings, sometimes losing count, sometimes sure that it had stopped, only to hear the startling bell again. And it was a bell, not the usual computer-generated bleep from the digital phones. The black telephone was so old Sara was surprised that it did not have a rotary dial. It didn't have any sleek lines or shiny buttons. Between cell phones and cordless phones and the digitization of noise, she had almost forgotten what a real telephone sounded like.

She used the back of her hand to wipe sweat off her lip. The heat from outside had started encroaching on the poorly ventilated squad room from the moment the power was cut. Now, over an hour later, the air was heavy, almost suffocating. To make matters worse, the bodies scattered around the room were starting to smell.

Brad's uniform shirt and pants were off, stuffed into the air-conditioning grates by Smith, probably to block prying eyes on the part of the police. Brad sat in his white boxer shorts and black socks, his embarrassment long past. Smith trusted Brad for some reason and he was the only one of them allowed any sort of freedom. Sara had sneaked him Jeffrey's wallet while he was taking the girls to the bathroom. She had no idea where he had hidden it. Her only hope was that he had done it well.

Stress had finally drained two of the remaining little girls, and they both slept with their heads in Brad's lap. Marla sat at a distance from the group, her mouth open, staring blankly at the floor. Sara was terrified the older woman would have another fit and tell Smith Jeffrey's true identity. She realized with cold clarity that if a choice had to be made, she would do whatever she needed to do to protect Jeffrey.

She leaned her head against the wall, allowing herself to look at Smith. He was pacing again, muttering under his breath. He had taken off his coat and she could see that every inch of his body was built, the muscles of his arms and shoulders bulging under his short-sleeved T-shirt. A huge blue tattoo of an eagle covered his right bicep, and on every second pass he took across the room Sara tried to decipher the words underneath to no avail.

Like his accomplice, he wore thick nighttime camouflage pants with his combat boots. The Kevlar vest must have felt like a strait-jacket in this heat, but he kept it strapped tightly to his chest. Animal aggression sweated from Smith's every pore, but it was the second shooter, the quiet one, who scared Sara most. He was the one who followed orders, who did whatever he was told to do, whether it was to shoot at small children or blow a hole through a police officer's head. This personality type was hardly uncommon among young men – the military actively recruited for it – but adding Smith to the mixture made him even more volatile. If something happened to Smith, the second shooter was a wild card. Cut off the head of the scorpion and the tail could still sting.