call back …” She gave the number. All Alex could hope was that Turner wouldn’t check a
voicemail from her number anytime too soon. Maybe he’d be really petty and delete it.
“Tara was a good girl, y’know?” she said when Moira handed her phone back. “She didn’t deserve any of this.”
Moira made sympathetic sounds. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” Like she was reading from a script.
“I just need to pray over her, say my goodbyes.”
Moira’s fingers touched her cross. “Of course.”
“She had a lot of problems, but who doesn’t? We got her going to church every
weekend. You can bet that boyfriend of hers didn’t like it.” At this Moira gave a little huff of agreement. “You think Detective Turner’ll call back soon?”
“As soon as he can. He may be tied up.”
“But you guys close in an hour, right?”
“To the public, yes. But you can come back on Mon—”
“I can’t, though.” Alex’s eyes scanned the photos taped below the ledge of Moira’s desk and spotted a woman in Winnie-the-Pooh scrubs. “I’m in nursing school.”
“At Albertus Magnus?”
“Yeah!”
“My niece is there. Alison Adams?”
“Real pretty girl with red hair?”
“That’s her,” Moira said with a smile.
“I can’t miss class. They’re so tough. I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired.”
“I know,” Moira said ruefully. “They’re running Allie ragged.” “I just … I need to be
able to tell my mama I said goodbye to her. Tara’s mom and dad were … They all weren’t
close.” Alex was flat out guessing now, but she suspected Moira Adams had her own story
about girls like Tara Hutchins. “If I could just see her face, say goodbye.”
Moira hesitated, then reached forward and gave her hand a squeeze. “I can have
someone take you down to see her. Just have your ID ready and … It can be hard, but prayer helps.”
“It always does,” said Alex fervently.
Moira pressed a button, and a few minutes later an exhausted-looking coroner in blue
scrubs appeared and waved Alex through.
It was cold on the other side of the double doors, the floors tiled in heathered gray, the
walls a melted cream. “Sign in here,” he said, gesturing to the clipboard on the wall. “I’ll
need photo ID. Cell phones, cameras, and all recording devices in the bin. You can retrieve
them when you return.”
“Sure,” said Alex. Then she held out her hand, gold glinting beneath the fluorescents.
“I think you dropped this.”
The room was larger than she’d expected and ice-cold. It was also unexpectedly noisy
—the dripping of a faucet, the hum of the freezers, the rush of the air conditioner—though
it was silent in another way. This was the last place Grays would come. To hell with Belbalm. She should intern at the morgue this summer.
The tables were metal, as were the basins and the hoses coiled above them, and the drawers—flat squares slotted into two of the walls like filing cabinets. Had Hellie been cut
up in a place like this? It wasn’t like the cause of death had been a mystery.
Alex wished she had her coat. Or Dawes’s parka. Or a shot of vodka.
She needed to work fast. The compulsion would give her about thirty minutes to get her
work done and get out. But it didn’t take her long to find Tara, and though the drawer was
heavier than she’d expected, it slid out smoothly.
There was something worse about seeing her like this a second time, as if they knew
each other. Looking at Tara now, Alex could see it had only been the blond hair that made
her think of Hellie. Hellie had been strong. Her body remembered the soccer and softball
she’d played in high school, and she could surf and skateboard like a girl out of Seventeen magazine. This girl was built like Alex, ropy, but weak.
Tara’s knees looked brownish gray. There was stubble near her bikini area, red razor bumps like a rash. She had a tattoo of a parrot at her hip and below it was written Key West in looping scrawl. Her right arm had an ugly realistic portrait of a young girl on it. A daughter? A niece? Her own face as a child? There was a pirate flag and a ship on cresting