Jeffrey held up his copy of the list as Brad passed out the packets according to the names Jeffrey had written on the outside. Jeffrey said, "I pulled this list of offenders off the computer this morning. I've sectioned them off to the usual teams, with the exception of Frank and Lena." He saw her mouth open to complain, but continued. "Brad will be working with you, Lena. Frank is with me."

Lena sat back in a defiant posture. Brad was hardly on her level, and her look said she knew exactly what he was doing. She would also realize as soon as she interviewed the third or fourth man on her list that Jeffrey was keeping her on a tight leash. Rapists tended to attack women in their own ethnic and age group. Lena and Brad would be interviewing every minority over the age of fifty with a sexual assault on his record.

"Dr. Linton will give you the rundown on the specifics." He paused, then, "My first guess would be that the attacker has some kind of religious leaning, maybe a fanatic. I don't want that to be the focus of your questioning, but keep it in the back of your mind." He stacked the papers on the podium. "If somebody comes up that we should look at, I want a call on my radio. I don't want any suspect falling down in custody or accidentally getting his head blown off."

Jeffrey studiously avoided meeting Sara's eyes as he said this last part. Jeffrey was a cop, he knew how things worked in the street. He knew that every man in this room had something to prove where Sibyl Adams was concerned. He also knew how easy it was to slip over that line between legal justice and human justice when you were out in the field, facing down the kind of animal who could rape a blind woman and carve a cross onto her abdomen.

"That clear?" he asked, not expecting an answer and not getting one. "I'll turn this over to Dr. Linton, then."

He walked to the back of the room, standing behind and to the right of Lena as Sara took the podium. She walked over to the chalkboard, reached up, and pulled down the white projection screen. Most of the men in this room had seen her in diapers, and the fact that they all had their notebooks out said volumes about Sara's professional abilities.

She gave Brad Stephens a nod and the room went dark.

The green opaque projector whirred to life, sending a flash of bright light onto the screen. Sara moved a photograph onto the bed and slid it under the glass.

"Sibyl Adams was found by me in the women's bathroom of the Filling Station around two-thirty yesterday afternoon," she said, focusing the projector's lens.

There was movement in the room as a Polaroid of Sibyl Adams lying partially nude on the bathroom floor came into view. Jeffrey found himself staring at the hole in her chest, wondering what kind of man could do the things that had been done to that poor young woman. He did not want to think about Sibyl Adams, blind, sitting on that toilet while her attacker slit her open for his own sick reasons. He did not want to think about what was going through her mind as her abdomen was being raped.

Sara continued. "She was sitting on the toilet when I opened the door. Her arms and legs were splayed open and the cut you see here"-she indicated the screen-"was bleeding profusely."

Jeffrey leaned over slightly, trying to see what Lena 's reaction to this was. She stood stock still, her spine a perfect right angle to the floor. He understood why she needed to do this, but he could not grasp how she was doing it. If someone in his family had gone through this, if Sara had been ravaged like this, Jeffrey knew in his heart that he would not want to know. He could not know.

Sara stood at the front of the room, her arms crossed over her chest. "She started to seize shortly after I established that she had a pulse. We fell to the ground. I tried to control the seizures, but she expired several seconds later."

Sara jerked the projector's drawer out to replace the photo with another. The machine was a dinosaur, borrowed from the high school. It wasn't as if Sara could send the crime photos down to the Jiffy Photo for enlargements.

The next picture that came on-screen was a close up of Sibyl Adams's head and neck. "The bruise under her eye came from a superior position, probably early on in the assault to discourage a struggle. A knife was held at her throat, very sharp, measuring about six inches. I'd say this was a boning knife, probably common to any kitchen. You can see a slight cut here." She traced her finger on the screen, along the middle of Sibyl's neck. "It didn't draw blood, but enough pressure was used to score the skin." She looked up, catching Jeffrey's eye. "I would imagine the knife was used to keep her from calling out while he raped her."

She continued. "There is a small bite mark on her left shoulder." The picture of this came up. "Bite marks are common with rape. This one shows the impression of the upper teeth only. I found nothing distinctive in the pattern, but I've sent the…" Sara paused, probably remembering Lena was in the room. "The impression was sent to the FBI lab for cross matching. If a known offender on file matches the impression, then we could assume that he's the perpetrator in this crime. However," she warned, "as we all know, the FBI won't consider this a high-priority case, so I don't think we can hang out hats on this piece of evidence. A more likely scenario would be to use the impression as validation after the fact. That is to say, find a solid suspect and nail him with the dental impression."

Next, the screen showed a photograph of the inner sides of Sibyl's legs. "You can see scrapes here at the knee where she gripped her legs around the toilet bowl during the assault." Another picture came, this one of Sibyl's bottom. "There are irregular bruises and scrapes on the buttocks, again from friction against the toilet seat.

"Her wrists," Sara said, putting in another photo, "show bruising from the handicap bars on the stall. Two fingernails were broken in the process of gripping the bars, probably to lift herself up and away from her assailant."

Sara slid in the next photograph. "This is a close-up of the incisions to her abdomen," she narrated. "The first cut was made from just below the collarbone all the way to the pelvic bone. The second cut was made from right to left." She paused. "I would guess from the irregular depth of the second cut that this was a backhanded movement by a left-handed assailant. The cut is deeper as it moves to her right side."

The next Polaroid was a close-up of Sibyls chest. Sara was quiet for a few beats, probably thinking the same thing Jeffrey was thinking. Up close, he could see where the puncture wound had been stretched. Not for the first time, he felt his stomach roll at the thought of what was done to this poor woman. He hoped to God she had not been conscious of what was happening to her.

Sara said, "This is the final cut. It's a puncture wound through the sternum. It goes straight through to her spine. I would guess this was the source of most of the blood." Sara turned to Brad. "Lights?"

She walked toward her briefcase, saying, "The symbol on her chest seems to be a cross. The assailant used a condom during the rape, which as we know is pretty common with the advent of DNA testing. Black lighting revealed no sperm or fluids. Blood on the scene appears to be only from the victim." She took a sheet of paper out of her briefcase. "Our friends at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation were nice enough to pull some strings last night. They worked up the blood analysis for me." She put on her copper-rimmed glasses and began reading, "High concentrations of hyoscyamine, atrosin and belladonnine as well as traces of scopolamine were found in her central blood and urine." She looked up. "This would suggest that Sibyl Adams ingested a lethal dose of belladonna, which belongs in the deadly nightshade plant family." Jeffrey glanced at Lena. She remained quiet, her eyes on Sara.