'My mother?' Lena felt light-headed. She leaned back against the desk. 'What are you talking about? My mother was there? She was there when Sibyl…?'

'Lee,' Charlotte began, putting her hand on Lena 's shoulder. 'It wasn't Hank. Your mother was driving the car. She's the one who blinded Sibyl.'

WEDNESDAY EVENING

ELEVEN

Sara lay in bed, trying not to think about what was living in the mattress underneath, her body. The autopsy had taken ten brutal hours, and when they had finally gotten back to the motel, she had nearly cried at the sight of the filthy room. Sara knew there was a maid around here somewhere. Earlier this morning, she had seen the woman pushing around a large cart with all sorts of cleaners and a vacuum. Except for the bed being made, nothing else in the room had been touched. Sara hadn't exactly been expecting a thank-you note for scrubbing the bathroom, but the woman could have at least vacuumed the rug. The green M amp;M she had seen under the table yesterday morning was still nestled in the shag carpet.

Sara closed her eyes and listened to Jeffrey humming in the shower, the water slapping against the plastic tub. She had cleaned the cut on his hand using some disinfectant they'd found in the morgue, but he would have to bandage it on his own when he got out of the shower. She was too tired to do it herself, and frankly, part of her could not let go of her anger from yesterday afternoon. They had spent the entire day together, yet neither one of them had been willing to break the ice and talk about what had happened.

Jeffrey seemed fine with this, which only served to annoy Sara more. The situation made her feel like the prototypical bitchy sit-com wife who was always harping on her poor, misunderstood husband. She had always supported Jeffrey, even when she'd thought he was wrong, and it was unfair of him to let her be cast in the role of shrew.

On top of that, Sara still had a bad feeling about Elawah and whatever Lena had drawn them into. The autopsy she had performed that day only served to heighten that sense of dread. Over the years, Grant County had seen its share of violent deaths but Sara was hard-pressed to think of a more awful way to die than being burned alive. She was usually adept at separating the victim from the crime. If you were going to cut into a dead body, you couldn't think of it as a person anymore. You had to look at it as parts of a whole: circulatory, respiratory, tissue, organs, skeleton.

Still, as Sara worked on the woman, she'd found herself wondering about her life, the method of her death, the family she was leaving behind. Then, she began to wonder about the perpetrator. What kind of person could do this to another human being? Certainly not the kind of person she wanted Jeffrey talking to.

They had not waited for Fred Bart to come before starting the autopsy, which was a good thing considering the dentist had never showed. Removing the remains from the car had proven to be the easy part. Once the corpse was on the table, Sara found that the woman's body had been so ravaged by fire that the usual procedures could not be followed. There was no need for the Stryker saw since the back of the skull had fractured off in Sara's hand, allowing the brain to slip out like the pit of a ripe peach. There was no need for a Y-incision to open the torso when there was hardly any skin left to cut.

All but two of the ribs were fractured by the heat. The larynx and trachea were seared, the tongue cooked into the neck organs. The pleural surfaces of both lungs were charred, the air spaces consolidated with soot. Most of the skeletal musculature had a well-done appearance. The bone marrow was black.

The soot in the lungs proved the woman had lived long enough to inhale the smoke. Sara was certainly not an arson specialist, but she assumed that the gas tank explosion had been the result of a fire that started inside the car. The blast from the tank had gone up and out, mostly damaging the very rear of the SUV. The woman, even sitting in the backseat, would have been able to remove her seat belt, get out of the car, before the real damage started.

From all appearances, she had not been raped. Sara wondered why this came as a relief. Sara herself had been raped – brutally so, as a certain lawyer liked to point out. As awful as that experience had been, she imagined it was much more painful to be burned alive.

The thing that terrified Sara most was that the woman surely knew what was coming. There had been no obvious damage to the skull; no one had knocked her out before the fire was set. She had watched and waited as flames devoured her body.

The shower cut off, and Sara rolled over onto her stomach, wishing she'd thought to bring their pillows from home. She was wearing socks, sweatpants, and a long-sleeved shirt buttoned up to the collar, even though the room was stuffy from the heat and smelled of wet fried chicken. The remnants of a pizza they'd had delivered were on the plastic table, and she thought about getting another slice, but her body would not move. She would have asked Jeffrey, but earlier he had taken one look at the well-done ground beef topping and dry-heaved.

The bed shifted as he got in. She waited for him to turn off the light, to bunch up his pillow and arrange the blankets like he usually did before he settled down. He did none of this, asking instead, 'You asleep?'

'Yes,' she lied. 'Did you put something on your hand?'

He didn't answer her question. I shouldn't have slowed the car.' He added, 'Yesterday,' as if she needed some clarification, then repeated, 'I shouldn't have slowed the car.'

Sara closed her eyes. 'I shouldn't have slapped you,' she answered, though as much as she tried, as shamed as she felt for resorting to violence, Sara couldn't bring herself to truly regret it.

Still, she rolled over, put her head on his chest. He gave a deep sigh, and she felt the last of her anger dissipate.

She said, 'You smell like hotel soap.'

'It could be worse,' he pointed out, though thankfully didn't tell her how. 'Did you call your mother?'

'She was taking a nap with Daddy.' Sara added, 'At six in the evening.'

Jeffrey laughed, but Sara had never told him that she was twenty-two years old before she found out that her parents' ubiquitous Sunday afternoon 'nap' excuse had been a cover for something far more illicit than sleeping. Nor did she tell him that her nineteen-year-old sister had been the one to inform her.

Jeffrey laced his hand through hers, suggesting, 'Maybe soon we'll be taking naps.'

A baby. Their baby.

He told her, I checked the machine while you were doing your autopsy notes. The adoption agency didn't call.'

'I checked it while you were in the shower.'

'They'll call,' he said. 'I can feel it.'

'Let's not talk about it,' she told him. 'I don't want to jinx it.' The truth was that it could take years before a baby was available, though the fact that they had agreed to take a child up to the age of two and hadn't asked for a specific race or sex had definitely moved them up the list. The woman at the agency had said that it could be next year or it could be any day now. All they could do was wait – something neither Jeffrey nor Sara was very good at.

Jeffrey stroked her arm, then her side. His thumb slipped just under the waist of her pants, and he suggested, 'Maybe we could take a nap right now.'

She sat up on her elbow and looked him in the eye so that her answer would be loud and clear. 'No part of my naked body is touching any part of this skanky motel room.'

He gave her one of his sly grins. 'Is this some kind of come-on?'

Sara let her head fall back to his chest, not wanting to give him the chance to change her mind. 'Please tell me that what I did today is going to help you so we can get out of here.'