“If a gas was used,” Jeffrey thought out loud, “then we would’ve been in danger when we opened the box.”
“It could’ve dissipated. Or been absorbed into the wood and soil.”
“Could she have gotten the cyanide through ground contamination?”
“That’s a pretty active state park. Joggers go through there all the time. I doubt anyone could’ve sneaked in a bunch of toxic waste without someone noticing and making a fuss.”
“Still?”
“Still,” she agreed. “Someone had time to bury her there. Anything’s possible.”
“How would you do it?”
Sara thought it through. “I would mix the salts in water,” she said. “Pour it down the pipe. She would obviously have her mouth close by so that she could get air. As soon as the salts hit her stomach, the acid would activate the poison. She would be dead in minutes.”
“There’s a metal plater on the edge of town,” Jeffrey said. “He does gold leafing, that sort of thing.”
Sara supplied, “Dale Stanley.”
“Pat Stanley’s brother?” Jeffrey asked. Pat was one of his best patrolmen.
“That was his wife you saw coming in.”
“What’s wrong with her kid?”
“Bacterial infection. Their oldest came in about three months ago with the worst asthma I’ve seen in a long time. He’s been in and out of the hospital with it.”
“She looked pretty sick herself.”
“I don’t see how she’s holding up,” Sara admitted. “She won’t let me treat her.”
“You think something’s wrong with her?”
“I think she’s ready for a nervous breakdown.”
Jeffrey let this sink in. “I guess I should pay them a visit.”
“It’s a horrible death, Jeffrey. Cyanide is a chemical asphyxiant. It takes all of the oxygen from the blood until there’s nothing left. She knew what was happening. Her heart must have been pumping ninety miles an hour.” Sara shook her head, as if she wanted to clear the image away.
“How long do you think it took her to die?”
“It depends on how she ingested the poison, what form was administered. Anywhere from two to five minutes. I have to think it was fairly quick. She doesn’t show any of the classic signs of prolonged cyanide poisoning.”
“Which are?”
“Severe diarrhea, vomiting, seizures, syncope. Basically, the body does everything it can to get rid of the poison as quickly as possible.”
“Can it? On its own, I mean.”
“Usually not. It’s extremely toxic. There are about ten different things you can try in the ER, from charcoal to amyl nitrate- poppers- but really, all you can do is treat symptoms as they occur and hope for the best. It’s incredibly fast-acting and almost always fatal.”
Jeffrey had to ask, “But you think it happened fast?”
“I hope so.”
“I want you to take this,” he said, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out the cell phone.
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t want that thing.”
“I like knowing where you are.”
“You know where I’m going to be,” she told him. “With Carlos, then in Macon, then back here.”
“What if they find something during the autopsy?”
“Then I’ll pick up one of the ten telephones at the lab and call you.”
“What if I forget the words to ‘Karma Chameleon’?”
She gave him a nasty look, and he laughed. “I love it when you sing to me.”
“That’s not why I don’t want it.”
He put the phone beside her on the table. “I guess asking you to do it for my sake wouldn’t change your mind?”
She stared at him for a second, then walked out of the exam room. He was still wondering if he was expected to follow her when she returned with a book in her hand.
She said, “I don’t know whether to throw this at your head or give it to you.”
“What is it?”
“I ordered it a few months ago,” she told him. “It came last week. I was going to give it to you when you finally moved in.” She held it up so he could read the title on the maroon slipcase. “Kantor’s Andersonville,” she said, adding, “It’s a first edition.”
He stared at the book, his mouth opening and closing a few times before words would come out. “It must have cost a fortune.”
She gave him a wry look as she handed him the novel. “I thought you were worth it at the time.”
He slid the book out of the paper case, feeling like he was holding the Holy Grail. The buckram was blue and white, the pages slightly faded at the edges. Carefully, he opened it to the title page. “It’s signed. MacKinlay Kantor signed it.”
She half shrugged, acting as if it wasn’t a big deal. “I know you like the book, and…”
“I can’t believe you did this,” Jeffrey managed, feeling like he couldn’t swallow. “I can’t believe it.”
When he was a kid, Miss Fleming, one of his English teachers, had given him the book to read during after-school detention. Jeffrey had been a general fuckup until then, pretty much resigned to the fact that his career choices were limited to mechanic or factory worker or worse, a petty thief like his old man, but the story had opened something up inside him, something that wanted to learn. The book had changed his life.
A psychiatrist would probably say there was a connection between Jeffrey’s fascination with one of the Confederacy’s most notorious Civil War prisons and his being a cop, but Jeffrey liked to think that what Andersonville gave him was a sense of empathy that he’d lacked until that point. Before Jeffrey had moved to Grant County and taken the job as police chief, he had gone to Sumter County, Georgia, to see the place for himself. He could still remember the chill he got standing just inside the stockade at Fort Sumter. Over thirteen thousand prisoners had died in the four years the prison was open. He had stood there until the sun went down and there was nothing more to see.
Sara asked, “Do you like it?”
All he could say was, “It’s beautiful.” He ran his thumb along the gilt spine. Kantor had gotten the Pulitzer for this book. Jeffrey had gotten a life.
“Anyway,” Sara said. “I thought you’d like it.”
“I do.” He tried to think of something profound to tell her that would help convey his gratitude, but instead found himself asking, “Why are you giving it to me now?”
“Because you should have it.”
He was only half-kidding when he asked, “As a going-away present?”
She licked her lips, taking her time responding. “Just because you should have it.”
From the front of the building, a man’s voice called, “Chief?”
“Brad,” Sara said. She stepped into the hall, answering, “Back here,” before Jeffrey could say anything else.
Brad opened the door, his hat in one hand, a cell phone in the other. He told Jeffrey, “You left your phone at the station.”
Jeffrey let his irritation show. “You came all the way over here to tell me that?”
“N-no, sir,” he stammered. “I mean, yes, sir, but also, we just got a call in.” He paused for a breath. “Missing person. Twenty-one years old, brown hair, brown eyes. Last seen ten days ago.”
He heard Sara whisper, “Bingo.”
Jeffrey grabbed his coat and the book. He handed the cell phone to Sara, saying, “Call me as soon as you know something on the autopsy.” Before she could object, he asked Brad, “Where’s Lena?”
CHAPTER FIVE
Lena wanted to run, but in Atlanta, they had told her to give it a couple of weeks before doing anything jarring. This morning, she had stayed in bed as long as she could, pretending to sleep in until Nan left for work, then slipping out for a walk a few minutes later. She had wanted time to think about what she had seen on the dead girl’s X-ray. The baby had been as big as her two fists put together, the same size as the baby they had taken from her womb.
As she walked down the street, Lena found herself wondering about the other woman in the clinic, the furtive looks they had given each other, the guilty way the woman had slumped into her chair, as if she wanted to disappear into nothing. Lena wondered how far along she had been, what had brought her to the clinic. She had heard stories about women who got abortions instead of worrying about birth control, but could not believe that anyone would willingly put themselves through such an ordeal more than once. Even after a week had passed, Lena couldn’t close her eyes without her mind’s eye conjuring up a twisted image of the fetus. The things she imagined in her head were surely worse than what was actually done.