Bitter Sweets

before he killed her.” She pointed to the microscope. “He had her bound with the wire for several hours. That’s a tissue sample from the area around her wrists. Take a look.”

    Reluctantly, Savannah ventured a glance through Dr. Liu’s scope, steeling herself, as always, for whatever horrors she might see.

    But even after a second and third peek, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. Mostly, she saw a lot of blue-black dots.

    “I give up,” she said. “What are they?”

    “Inflammation cells. They take a few hours to form. At least five or six.”

    “They couldn’t have appeared postmortem?”

    “No, only a living body produces those.”

    “Great.” Savannah sighed and pushed away from the microscope, as though doing so would provide any emotional distance. “Now we can both have nightmares.”

    Dr. Jenny gave her a compassionate pat on the shoulder. “I can show you something that might make you feel a bit better about it all,” she said.

    “Please do.”

    The doctor walked to a file cabinet, opened a drawer and took out a manila envelope. After breaking the seal, she spread a dozen or more graphic, color photos across the counter.

    “These are going to make me feel better?” Savannah asked, wincing at the documentation of the violence perpetrated on Lisa Mallock.

    “This one will.”

    Jennifer chose one and held it up for Savannah’s closer examination. The picture clearly showed abrasions on the knuckles.

    “Defensive wounds?” Savannah asked. “On the contrary, I’m fairly certain they’re offensive. Of course, almost anything is possible. But in my experience, that sort of skinning of the knuckles is usually done when a person is punching someone else...and pretty effectively, too.”

    Savannah allowed that information to bubble in the mental pot for a few moments. “So, are you telling me that you think she got at least a few licks in before she bit the dust?”

    “That’s right. If it’s any comfort to you, I think you can be fairly sure that Lisa Mallock went down fighting.”

    The thought of Lisa landing some painful blows on her attacker did help. A little. If she was fighting, she had hope, up until the moment she died.

    Although Savannah couldn’t exactly explain why, somehow, that made it better.

    With Lisa Mallock weighing heavily on her mind, Savannah found herself drawn to the simple duplex. Sitting in her car on the opposite side of the street, Savannah wished she had woke Lisa that night and warned her that Earl was on her trail. If she had only ...

    Don’t play “If,” she warned herself. It’ll drive you crazy-

    The problem with the “If" game was that there was no end to it. “If she had warned Lisa that night." “If Lisa had never married Earl Mallock." “If Earl had stepped in front of a truck and gotten flattened a year ago today." “If Lisa’s biological father hadn’t given her away after his wife died."

    The fact was: Lisa was dead, reduced from a human being to an autopsy on Dr. Jennifer Liu’s examination table. Nothing could change that now.

    Once, Savannah had asked Jennifer how she stood it, day after day, seeing the cruelty that one person could visit on another.

    “I don’t think I could bear to work in an emergency room,” Jennifer had told her, “to see the misery and know it was my responsibility to try to stop it. But it isn’t so bad, being a medical examiner. By the time they come to me, the suffering is over. Nothing I can do will make it worse for the victim. But, if I can unravel the puzzle, 1 may be able to bring them justice .. . and closure to their loved ones.”

    And that’s all you can do now, too, kid , she told herself as she studied the small house, the pink bicycle with training wheels chained to the side fence. Just try to unravel the puzzle.

    An elderly lady in a red-and-white-striped shirt and blue shorts was watering a flower bed in front of the house. She was keeping a close eye on Savannah, and it occurred to Savannah that not much would get past her.

    As she stepped out of the Camaro and strolled up the sidewalk toward the woman, she temporarily allowed her sadness to be set aside, supplanted by hope. Maybe she could find one more small piece of the puzzle.

    “I already talked to a cop,” Mrs. Abernathy said as she handed Savannah a can of generic store brand cola and a tall glass of ice. “He was kinda heavy without a lot of hair. He had on a wrinkled-up trench coat. I