IT WAS ONLY AFTER we cut her down—only as I was zipping the body bag; only as I was moving her left hand out of the path of the zipper—that I noticed: The dead woman’s little finger was missing, amputated at the base so neatly that it left no stump; only a circle of crusty black blood and—within the outer black ring—a small circle of sheared-off bone, like a bull’s-eye in a target. It was a startling contrast with the remaining fingers. The nine nails looked freshly coated with scarlet polish, as if the woman had just come from a nail salon—a manicure to primp for her date with death.
We carried them out together, these two people whom I suspected never actually met in life, only in death. Tyler and I, along with Art Bohanan and Garland Hamilton, carried the woman’s body; Detective Kittredge and three uniformed deputies carried the man’s.
When we reached the clearing where the vehicles were parked, I saw movement at a window beside the trailer’s front door. Fingers curled around a curtain and pulled it aside, and a woman’s face stared out at me. It was the dead man’s widow—Kittredge had told me she was inside. Even through the grimy glass, the bleakness in her expression was unmistakable, and I found myself averting my gaze—out of respect, I told myself, but also, truth be told, out of discomfort. I had nothing to offer her: no comfort, no explanation, no way of setting the world right by her. Judging by the shabby trailer, the shabby truck, and the shabby patch of ground, life had been dealing low cards to her for years now; this one was simply the latest. I didn’t know why the deck seemed to be so thoroughly stacked against some people—and so completely in favor of others—but I’d seen lots of lousy hands dealt to good-hearted people by now. Seen plenty of gold-plated hands go to liars and jerks, too. What was the Bible verse my minister, Reverend Michaelson, had chosen as his text last Sunday? “God sends his rain on the just and on the unjust?” Reverend Mike’s gloss on the text was an uplifting one, a glass-half-full gloss: God’s blessings and grace don’t have to be earned; they’re there, just like the beauty of fall foliage and summer sunsets, freely available to even the most undeserving.
But what about the converse, I couldn’t help wondering: What about the misfortune and suffering—sometimes even black-hearted evil—that seemed to rain down relentlessly on people who were long overdue for some sunshine?
CHAPTER 33
Tyler
SQUINTING AGAINST THE GLARE from the porch light, Tyler batted a moth from his face and unlocked his front door. “Hey, babe, I’m back,” he called. “Finally. Sorry it took so long.” He switched on the living room light and closed the front door, but not before the moth darted into the apartment with him. “Roxanne? Rox? Are you here?” His voice echoed in the living room, and he felt a flash of fear—that Roxanne was gone, that she’d bolted back to Memphis to study with her classmates. Hell, maybe she was never even here, he thought. Maybe I just dreamed her. A fever dream, born of the loneliness and longing and lust that had been his trio of constant companions ever since she’d moved to Memphis for med school back in August, two months before. Two months going on forever.
“Hey,” a distracted voice answered him. “Here. In the bedroom.”
She was sprawled diagonally across the bed, lying on her stomach, propped on her elbows, her nose buried in one of the half-dozen doorstop textbooks she’d schlepped with her. She was naked. Her slender, graceful back was arched, and the pillow beneath her pelvis had slightly lifted her butt, which was round and firm from years of ballet and jazz classes, displaying it to best advantage, which was considerable. The dimples at the top of her hips—“dimples of Venus”; Tyler loved that name—seemed to be smiling just for him.
She turned her head toward the doorway, where he’d stopped to admire the view, and gave him a smoldering look over her shoulder. “I’m studying anatomy,” she said, arching one eyebrow at him. “The human reproductive system. Come and be my lab partner.” She parted her lips and ran her tongue across the upper lip. “Better yet,” she murmured, “be my lab partner and come.”