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  “What’d he call in?”

  “Just said he thought he saw something, is all. You know how Brad is, calls in his own shadow.” She gave a small chuckle. Brad was somewhat of a mascot around the station house, a twenty-one-year-old man whose round face and wispy blond hair made him look more like a boy. It was a joke among the senior squad to steal Brad’s hat and hide it around various landmarks in town. Jeffrey had seen it resting on top of the statue of General Lee in front of the high school just last week.

  Jeffrey thought of Sara. “Frank is in charge tonight. Don’t page me unless someone’s dead.”

  “Two birds with one stone,” Marla chuckled again. “The coroner and the chief in one call.”

  He tried to remind himself that he had moved from Birmingham to Grant because he wanted to be in a small town where everyone knew their neighbor. Everyone knowing his own personal business was one of the few tradeoffs. Jeffrey was about to say something innocuous to Marla, but stopped when he heard a loud shriek from the parking lot.

  He leaned around the corner to take a look just as a girl’s voice yelled, “Fuck you, you fucking bastard.”

  Marla said, “Chief?”

  “Hold on,” he whispered, feeling his gut clench at the anger in the girl’s voice. He knew from experience that a ticked-off young girl was the worst thing to have to deal with in a parking lot on a Saturday night. Boys he could handle, it was all a pissing contest and, for the most part, any young man wanted to be stopped from getting into an actual fight. Young girls tended to take a lot to get riled up and a hell of a lot more to get calmed back down. An angry teenage girl was something to fear, especially when she had a gun in her hand.

  “I’m going to kill you, you fucking bastard,” she yelled at one of the boys. His friends quickly peeled off into a semicircle, and the young man stood alone, the gun pointed at his chest. The girl was no more than four feet away from her target, and as Jeffrey watched, she took a step closer, narrowing the gap.

  “Shit,” Jeffrey hissed, then, remembering he had the phone in his hand, he ordered, “Get Frank and Matt over to Skatie’s right now.”

  “They’re over in Madison.”

  “Lena and Brad, then,” he said. “Silent approach. There’s a girl with a gun in the front parking lot.”

  Jeffrey slipped the phone back into its cradle, feeling his body tense. His throat was tight, and his carotid artery felt like a pulsating snake inside his throat. A thousand things went through his mind in the course of a few seconds, but he pushed these thoughts away as he took off his suit jacket and slid his paddle holster behind his back. Jeffrey held his arms out to the side as he walked into the parking lot. The young girl glanced his way as he came into her line of sight, but she still kept the gun leveled at the boy. The muzzle was pointing down toward the boy’s gut and as Jeffrey drew closer he could see that her hand was shaking. Thankfully, her finger was not yet tucked around the trigger.

  Jeffrey positioned himself so that he was parallel to the building. The girl’s back was to the rink, the parking lot and highway in front of her. He hoped that Lena had the sense to make Brad come in from the side of the building. There was no telling what the girl would do if she felt crowded. One stupid mistake could end up killing a lot of people.

  When Jeffrey was about twenty feet from the scene, he said, “Hey,” loudly enough to get everyone’s attention.

  The girl startled, even though she had noticed his approach. Her finger slipped around the trigger. The weapon was a Beretta .32, a so-called mousegun, which was certainly not a man-stopper but could do plenty of damage up close. She had eight chances to kill somebody with that gun. If she was a good shot, and even a monkey would be at such close range, she was holding eight lives in the palm of her hand.

  “Y’all get back,” Jeffrey told the young men standing around. There was some hesitation before this sunk in, and the group finally moved toward the front of the parking lot. The smell of pot was pungent even at this distance, and Jeffrey could tell from the way the intended victim was swaying that he had smoked a great deal before the girl had surprised him.

  “Go away,” the girl ordered Jeffrey. She was dressed in black, the sleeves of her T-shirt pushed up past her elbows, probably to fight the heat. She was barely a teenager, and her voice was soft, but she managed to project it well.

  She repeated her order. “I said go away.”

  Jeffrey stood his ground, and she turned her gaze back to the boy and said, “I’m gonna kill him.”

  Jeffrey held his hands out, asking, “Why?”

  She seemed surprised by his question, which was why he had asked it. People with guns don’t tend to do a lot of thinking when they’re holding them. The nose of the gun tilted down slightly as she addressed Jeffrey.

  “To stop him,” she said.

  “Stop him from what?”

  She seemed to mull this over in her mind. “That’s nobody’s business.”

  “No?” Jeffrey asked, taking a step closer, then another. He stopped at around fifteen feet from the girl, close enough to see what was going on, but not enough to threaten her.

  “No, sir,” the girl answered, and her good manners put him a little more at ease. Girls who said “sir” did not shoot people.

  “Listen,” Jeffrey began, trying to think of something to say. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes, sir,” she answered. “You’re Chief Tolliver.”

  “That’s right,” he told her. “What do I call you? What’s your name?”

  She ignored the question, but the boy stirred, as if his pot-altered brain had just clicked in to what was going on. He said, “Jenny. It’s Jenny.”

  “Jenny?” Jeffrey asked her. “That’s a pretty name.”

  “Yeah, w-well,” Jenny stammered, obviously taken aback. She recovered quickly, though, saying, “Please just be quiet. I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Maybe you do,” Jeffrey said. “Seems to me like you’ve got a lot on your mind here.”

  She seemed to debate this, then raised the gun back to the boy’s chest. Her hand still shook. “Go away or I’ll kill him.”

  “With that gun?” Jeffrey asked. “Do you know what it’s like to kill someone with a gun? Do you know what that feels like?” He watched her digest this, knowing immediately that she did not have it in her.

  Jenny was a large girl, probably fifty pounds overweight. Dressed totally in black, she had the appearance of one of those girls who blends in with the scenery as a way of life. The boy she was aiming the gun at was a good-looking kid, probably the object of an unrequited crush. In Jeffrey’s day, she would have left a nasty note in his locker. Today, she was pointing a gun.

  “Jenny,” Jeffrey began, wondering if the gun was even loaded. “Let’s work this out. This guy’s not worth getting into trouble over.”

  “Go away,” Jenny repeated, though her voice was not as firm. She used her free hand to wipe her face. He realized that she was crying.

  “Jenny, I don’t think—” He stopped as she disengaged the safety. The metallic click was like a knife in his ear. He reached around to his back, putting his hand on his weapon but not drawing.

  Jeffrey tried to keep his voice calm and reasonable. “What’s happening here, Jenny? Why don’t we talk this through? It can’t be that bad.”

  She wiped her face again. “Yes, sir,” she said. “It is.”

  Her voice was so cold that Jeffrey felt a chill on his neck. He suppressed a shiver as he slid his gun out of its holster. Jeffrey hated guns because, as a cop, he saw what kind of damage they could do. Carrying one was something he did because he had to, not because he wanted to. In his twenty years on the police force, Jeffrey had drawn his weapon on a suspect only a handful of times. Of those times, he had fired it twice, but never directly at a human being.

  “Jenny,” he tried, putting some authority in his voice. “Look at me.”

  She kept her gaze on the boy in front of her for what seemed like
forever. Jeffrey was silent, letting her have her sense of control. Slowly, she let her eyes turn toward Jeffrey. She let her gaze settle low, until she found the nine millimeter he held at his side.

  She licked her lips nervously, obviously assessing the threat. The same dead tone rang in his ears when she said, “Shoot me.”

  He thought he had heard wrong. This was far from the answer he had been expecting.

  She repeated, “Shoot me now or I’m gonna shoot him.” With that, she lifted the Beretta toward the boy’s head. Jeffrey watched as she spread her feet apart to a shoulder-width stance and cupped the butt of the gun with her free hand. Her posture was that of a young woman who knew how to hold a weapon. Her hands were steady now, and she kept her eyes locked on the boy’s.

  The boy whined, “Oh, shit,” and there was a spattering sound on the asphalt as he urinated.

  Jeffrey raised his gun as she fired, but her shot went wide over the boy’s head, splitting pieces of the plastic sign and canopy off the building.

  “What was that?” Jeffrey hissed, knowing that the only reason Jenny was still standing was that his gut had stopped his own finger from pulling the trigger. She had hit the center of the dot on the “i” in Skatie’s. Jeffrey doubted most of his cops on the force could shoot with that much precision, under this much pressure.

  “It was a warning,” Jenny said, though he had not expected her to answer. “Shoot me,” the girl repeated. “Shoot me or I swear to God I’m gonna blow his brains out right here.” She licked her lips again. “I can do it. I know how to use this.” She jerked the gun slightly, indicating what she meant. “You know I can do it,” she said, again taking a wide stance to counteract the Beretta’s recoil. She turned the muzzle slightly and blasted out the apostrophe on the sign. People in the parking lot might have scattered or yelled, but Jeffrey did not notice. All he could see was the smoke coming off the muzzle of her gun.

  When he could breathe again, Jeffrey said, “There’s a big difference between a sign and a human being.”

  She mumbled, and he strained to hear her say, “He’s not a human being.”

  Jeffrey caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He recognized Sara instantly. She had taken off her skates and her white socks stood stark against the black asphalt.

  “Honey?” Sara called, her voice pitched up in fear. “Jenny?” she said.

  “Go away,” Jenny snapped, but her tone was petulant, more like the child she was than the monster she had been just a few seconds earlier. “Please.”

  “She’s okay,” Sara said. “I just found her inside, and she’s fine.”

  The gun faltered, then Jenny’s resolve seemed to kick in as she raised it back, pointing the weapon squarely between the boy’s eyes. The same dead voice came back with her resolve, and she said, “You’re lying.”

  Jeffrey took one look at Sara and knew that the girl was right. Sara was not a practiced liar, so she was easy to read. Discounting that, even from this distance Jeffrey could see the blood covering the front of Sara’s shirt and jeans. Someone inside the rink had obviously been injured and was possibly, probably, dead. He looked back at Jenny, finally able to reconcile the soft, little girl’s face with the threat that she had become.

  With a start, he realized that the safety was still engaged on his gun. He clicked it off, giving Sara a look of warning to stay back.

  “Jenny?” Sara’s throat made a visible swallow. Jeffrey did not recognize the singsong voice she used; she had never talked down to children. Obviously, whatever violence Jenny had wreaked inside the rink had altered Sara. Jeffrey did not know what to make of it. There hadn’t been any gunfire in the rink, and Buell Parker, the rink’s rent-a-cop, had said everything was fine when Jeffrey had checked in with him. Where was Buell, Jeffrey wondered. Was he inside, securing a crime scene, not letting anyone out? What had Jenny done inside the rink? Jeffrey would have given anything at that moment in time to pause the scene in front of him and find out exactly what had happened.

  Jeffrey chambered a round into the nine-mil. Sara’s head snapped around at the sound, and she held her hand out to him, palm down, as if to say, No, calm down. Don’t do this. He looked past her shoulder at the rink entrance. He expected to see a group of spectators with their noses pressed to the glass, but the doorway was empty. What had happened inside that was more interesting than the scene playing out in front of him?

  Sara tried again, saying, “She’s fine, Jenny. Come see.”

  “Dr. Linton,” Jenny said, her voice wavering, “please don’t talk to me.”

  “Sweety,” Sara answered, her tone as shaky as Jenny’s. “Look at me. Please just look at me.” When the girl did not respond, Sara said, “She’s fine. I promise you she’s fine.”

  “You’re lying,” Jenny answered. “You’re all liars.” She turned her attention back to the boy. “And you’re the worst liar of all,” she told him. “You’re going to burn in hell for what you did, you bastard.”

  The boy spoke in a fit of rage, spittle flying from his mouth. “I’ll see you there, bitch.”

  Jenny’s voice took on a calmness. Something seemed to pass between her and the boy, and when she answered, her voice was childlike. “I know you will.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jeffrey saw Sara step forward. He watched as Jenny sighted down the barrel of the short-nosed gun, lining it up to the boy’s head. The girl stood there, stock-still, waiting. Her hands did not shake, her lip did not tremble, and her hand did not falter. She seemed more resigned to the task in front of her than Jeffrey did.

  “Jenny…,” Jeffrey began, trying to see some way out of this. He was not going to shoot a little girl. There was no way he could shoot this kid.

  Jenny looked over her shoulder and Jeffrey followed her gaze. A police car had finally pulled up, and Lena Adams and Brad stepped out, weapons drawn. They were in a textbook triangle formation, with Jeffrey at the top.

  “Shoot me,” Jenny said, keeping her gun steady on the boy.

  “Stand down,” Jeffrey told the officers. Brad followed orders, but he saw Lena hesitate. He gave her a hard look, about to repeat his order, but finally she lowered her weapon.

  “I’ll do it,” Jenny mumbled. She stood impossibly still, making Jeffrey wonder what was inside the girl that she could approach this situation with such resignation.

  Jenny cleared her throat and said, “I’ll do it. I’ve done it before.”

  Jeffrey looked to Sara for confirmation, but her attention was focused on the little girl with the gun.

  “I’ve done it before,” Jenny repeated. “Shoot me, or I’ll kill him and then shoot myself anyway.”

  For the first time that night, Jeffrey assessed his shot. He tried to force his brain to accept that she represented a clear danger to the boy in front of her, no matter what her age was. If he hit her in the leg or shoulder, she would have enough time to pull the trigger. Even if Jeffrey went for her torso, there was still the chance that she would squeeze off a shot before she went down. At the level Jenny was pointing the gun, the boy would be dead before she hit the ground.

  “Men are so weak,” Jenny hissed, sighting the weapon. “You never do the right thing. You say you will, but you never do.”

  “Jenny…,” Sara pleaded.

  “I’ll give you to five,” Jenny told him. “One.”

  Jeffrey swallowed hard. His heart was pounding so loudly in his ears that he saw rather than heard the girl as she counted.

  “Two.”

  “Jenny, please.” Sara clasped her hands in front of her as if in prayer. They were dark, almost black with blood.

  “Three.”

  Jeffrey took aim. She wouldn’t do this. There was no way she would do this. She could not have been more than thirteen. Thirteen-year-old girls did not shoot people. This was suicide.

  “Four.”

  Jeffrey watched the young woman’s finger tighten on the trigger, watched the muscles along her forearm work in slow motion
as she moved to tighten her finger.

  “Five!” she screamed, the veins in her neck standing out. She ordered, “Shoot me, goddamn it!” as she braced herself for the Beretta’s recoil. He saw her arm tense and her wrist lock. Time moved so slowly that he could see her muscles engaging along her forearm as her finger tightened on the trigger.

  She gave him one last chance, yelling, “Shoot me!”

  And he did.

  3

  AT TWENTY-EIGHT weeks old, Jenny Weaver’s child might have been viable outside the womb had its mother not tried to flush it down the toilet. The fetus was well-developed and well-nourished. The brain stem was intact and, with medical intervention, the lungs would have matured over time. The hands would have learned to grasp, the feet to flex, the eyes to blink. Eventually, the mouth would have learned to speak of something other than the horrors it spoke of to Sara now. The lungs had taken breath, the mouth gasped for life. And then it had been killed.

  For the past three-and-a-half hours, Sara had tried to reassemble the baby from the parts Jenny Weaver had left in the bathroom and in the red book bag they found in the trash by the video game room. Using tiny sutures instead of the usual baseball stitches, Sara had sewn the paper-thin flesh back together into the semblance of a child. Her hands shook, and Sara had redone some of the knots because her fingers were not nimble enough on the first try.

  Still, it was not enough. Working on the child, tying the tiny sutures, was like pulling a thread on a sweater. For every area repaired, there was another that could not be concealed. There was no disguising the trauma the child had been through. In the end, Sara had finally accepted that her self-appointed task was an exercise in futility. The baby would go to the grave looking much the way she had looked the last time her mother had seen her.

  Sara took a deep breath, reviewing her report again before signing off on her findings. She had not waited for Jeffrey or Frank to begin the autopsy. There had been no witnesses to the cutting and dissecting and reassembling Sara had performed. She had excluded them on purpose, because she did not think she could do this job while other people watched.