Jackson 07 - Where All the Dead Lie Read Online Free PDF

She’d seen the look on Taylor’s face: for once all the masks pushed aside, all the walls dropped, hate and righteous fury emanating from her…it had frightened Sam. Perhaps her best friend was a better actress than she gave her credit for. She’d always kept the dark side of herself hidden.
    Sam pushed her bangs off her forehead and regloved. She went back into the suite, made the rounds, looking at the hearts in situ, then returned to her table, took up the scalpel and made the incision into the dead man’s chest a bit harder than absolutely necessary.
    She felt so worthless. She could blame no one but herself. She was the one who’d let the monster into their lives. And he’d taken from all of them—her child, Fitz’s eye, Taylor’s voice.
    The man’s breastplate was off now, the rhythm of the posts around the room underway. The bone saw whirred to life, a few moments later there was an audible pop and Stuart called out, “Head’s ready.” Sam dropped her scalpel and went to the body, smoothed her fingers across the young man’s brain, saw nothing unusual, then nodded her okay. Stuart took the brain from the cavity with a few quick cuts, set it in the scale to be weighed, and as she went back to her own table again, he shouted, “Brain’s ready.” It would wait; she’d have to dissect the organs of all five bodies in turn, searching for the clues that would affirm the cause of death. No murders this morning, nothing extraordinary, so no special precautions were being taken. Just another day at the office.
    Cutting and sawing and weighing and measuring soothed her tired mind. This was her world, finite, sure, and expected. Unlike Taylor, she had the luxury of being able to work, of finding herself again through her job. To throw herself into the sameness of each day. Every body held its secrets, but in side, they’re all alike.
    Was she still?
    She didn’t think so.
    Oh, the rational part of her understood that all of her organs were in their proper places. The doctors said there was even a chance she could conceive again. But the thought of losing another child brought her up short. Her grief had been tremendous, but it was the reaction of her husband, Simon, that had been more than she could handle. He did blame Taylor, hadn’t wrapped his head around the situation yet. They still went to bed stiff and unloving, his back turned to hers.
    He blamed Sam, too. She knew that. And she agreed with him. She could have fought harder, could have seen what was coming. Could have protected their child. She vacillated between understanding his frustration and hating him for blaming her. She hated herself a bit, too. What kind of mother lets her child be murdered?
    The haze of the past weeks had finally been lifted by her son’s first steps. The twins, Matthew and Madeline, weren’t fazed by their mother’s inability to pick them up, to look at them. They had each other. They knew, inside, that she loved them, that she was afraid that if she touched them, she’d taint their souls with the rot permeating hers. She saw it in their eyes—the forgiveness, the patience. They would heal her, if she’d let them. For their sakes, she had to come to grips with this.
    When she began to bleed yesterday, that’s when the rails came off the train again. It was her first period since the miscarriage, and such an open acknowledgement that her life was inextricably altered. She was empty again. No child growing, no soreness in her breasts, no morning sickness. When the child was cut from her, so were the symptoms, with such suddenness that she wondered if it were all a dream.
    A nightmare, more likely.
    She realized she was standing with both hands on her stomach, her left holding the skin down flat, her right poised at the ready, a scalpel between her fingers, pointed toward her own flesh.

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    Edinburgh
     
    The papers screamed the news, the radio and television repeating the story over and over at