Hidden Riches

when he walked in and saw her white face and the open file. Even as he strode toward her he watched her eyes roll back. He had her chair pushed away from the desk and her head between her knees in two brisk moves.
    “Just breathe slow.” His voice was drum tight, but the hand on the back of her head was gentle as he reached up and slapped the file closed.
    “I was calling Lea.” Dora swallowed desperately as her stomach heaved. Bile tickled gleefully in the back of her throat. “I was just calling Lea.”
    “Keep your head down,” he ordered. “And breathe.”
    “Try a little of this.” Dearborne held out a glass of water to Jed. There was sympathy in his voice. He remembered his first murder victim. Most good cops did. “There’s a cot in the back room if she wants to stretch out.”
    “She’ll be all right.” Jed kept the pressure light on Dora’s head as he accepted the water. “Would you give us a minute, Sheriff?”
    “Sure. Take your time,” Dearborne added before he closed the door behind him.
    “I want you to come up real slow,” Jed told her. “If you feel faint again, put your head back down.”
    “I’m okay.” But the trembling was worse than the nausea, and much more difficult to control. She let her head fall back against the chair and kept her eyes closed. “I guess I’ve made a lasting impression on the sheriff.”
    “Try some of this.” He brought the cup to her lips, urging her to swallow. “I want you to feel better before I yell at you.”
    “You might have to wait awhile.” She opened her eyes as she sipped. Yes, his were angry, she realized. Really angry. But she couldn’t worry about that just yet. “How can you face that?” she said softly. “How can you possibly face that on a regular basis?”
    He dipped his fingers in the cool water and rubbed them on the back of her neck. “Do you want to lie down?”
    “No, I don’t want to lie down.” She looked away from him. “And if you have to yell, get it over with. But before you do, you should know I wasn’t prying or playing detective. Believe me, I didn’t want to see that. I didn’t need to see that.”
    “Now you can start working on forgetting it.”
    “Is that what you do?” She made herself look at him again. “Do you just file this sort of thing away and forget it?”
    “We’re not talking about me. You have no business being this close, Dora.”
    “I have no business?” She moistened her dry lips and set the cup aside before she forced herself to stand. “The man inside that file tried to rape me. He would certainly have killed me. That brings me pretty Goddamn close. Even knowing that, knowing what he did and what he tried todo, I can’t justify what I saw in those pictures. I just can’t. I guess I want to know if you can.”
    He’d seen enough to know just what kind of afterimage she’d be carrying with her. He’d seen enough to know it was worse than most. “I don’t justify, Dora. If you want to know if I can live with it, then yeah, I can. I can look at it. I can go down to the coroner’s right now and take a good long look at the real thing. And I can live with it.”
    She nodded, then walked shakily to the door. “I’m going to wait in the car.”
    Jed waited until she was gone before he picked up the file and studied the photos. He swore, not at what he saw, but at what Dora had seen.
    “She okay?” Dearborne asked as he came back in.
    “She’ll do.” He handed the file over. “I’d like to take you up on your offer of talking to the coroner.”
    “Guess you want to see the stiff, too.”
    “I’d appreciate it.”
    “No problem.” Dearborne picked up his hat, settled it on his head. “You can read the autopsy report on the way. It’s interesting. Our pal had a hell of a last meal.”
     
    Dora refused the snack the flight attendant offered and stuck with icy ginger ale. Her system balked at even the thought of food. She did her best to ignore the scents of deli meat and mayo as the other passengers dug in.
    She’d had a lot of time to think, stretched out on the front seat of the rental car while Jed had been with Dearborne. Time enough to realize that she’d taken her shock and revulsion out on him. And he hadn’t taken his anger out on her.
    “You haven’t yelled at me yet.”
    Jed continued to work his crossword puzzle. He’d have preferred to read through Dearborne’s reports again, but they would wait until he was alone. “It didn’t seem