Shame

accuracy of his words.
    “You grew older, and you tried to fit in, but you never really did. As an adolescent, you rubbed your face a lot, hoping to erase your freckles. The habit remains, even though most of the freckles don’t. You still rub at them, and you don’t even know it.”
    She drew her incriminating hand away from her face and tried to find a place to bury it.
    “All good little literature majors read
Heart of Darkness,
Miss Line. ‘The horror, the horror,’ Mistah Kurtz said. If you’re going to write about me, you’re going to have to face up to what Kurtz saw, and what ultimately killed him. Do you really want that for yourself?”
    Her jaw didn’t want to move, nor her mouth open, but somehow the words came out. “I do,” she said.
    Even to her own ears, it sounded as if she were taking wedding vows.
    Elizabeth found herself shaking. Maybe I should hire a goddamn priest, she thought, and have him do an exorcism. Her past keptpopping out at her like some demonic jack-in-the-box. She turned her head quickly and saw that Louise hadn’t noticed her shakes. Elizabeth returned to examining The Book, doing her best to study it with single-minded purpose. Every report done by everyone and anyone was in The Book, from the notes of the first sheriff’s deputy on the scene to the medical examiner’s report.
    Immersed in her scrutiny, she didn’t expect a packet to fall on her desk. She jumped. That seemed to give Sergeant Eick some satisfaction.
    “The photos are not to leave this room. Is that understood?”
    “Yes.”
    “When she’s done with them, Louise, I’ll need you to take possession of them and walk them back to Evidence.”
    “Aye, aye, Sergeant,” said Louise.
    As Eick walked out of the room, the two women’s eyes met—they could barely refrain from laughing.
    Elizabeth put the photos aside and returned to The Book. She wasn’t ready for the pictures yet.
    She reviewed the transcriptions, sketches, and the breakdown of who had been responsible for what in the investigation. There were aerial photographs to examine and field reports she had to work her way through. Most of what was in The Book was a study in futility. The investigation had been methodical and thorough, but for all that, they had very little to go on.
    When she finally finished with the paperwork, all that remained was for her to look at the photos. Elizabeth hated to look at such pictures, and yet she needed to see them for what they had to say. “Scene of the scream” was how one homicide detective had referred to crime scene photos. That phrase had stayed with her over the years. She could never pick up the photos without thinking about that and how true it was. Over the years she’d seen so many pictures. She wished she could forget them but couldn’t. They even surfaced in her sleep. She had thisrecurring nightmare where she’d find herself staring at crime scene photos, only to realize that she herself was the victim.
    Though she often woke up screaming, she still could not stop herself from going on to the next case.
    Elizabeth turned over the first photo and looked at the picture. It was a close-up of Lita Jennings’s face. Though she was dead, her green eyes were still open. Doll eyes. There had been a time when murderers hadn’t wanted their victims to look upon them as they died, believing that what a dying person last saw became imprinted on the eyeball.
    In essence, Elizabeth wanted to fulfill that superstition, to become that eyeball and see beyond death.
    She turned more pictures over, moved them around like a tarot reader. There were close-ups of the bruised neck, of Lita’s discolored skin. Of her bluish tongue. Of her propped legs. Of the red
A
, almost indistinguishable in her brown pubic patch. Of her twisted mouth.
    Still screaming.
    He had taught her to how to contemplate such scenes without looking away, without even blinking. Gray Parker, mentor.
    Not passionate. The impression—no, the certainty—overwhelmed her. More purpose than compulsion.
    First the impressions came, then she tried to apply the logic. A choke hold had killed Lita. The murder appeared to be methodical, without rage. Scripted. Rehearsed.
    The evil hadn’t been random. This wasn’t a chance death. And it wasn’t the work of a serial killer or even a copycat killer. The revelation surprised Elizabeth.
    But he still enjoyed it.
    The murderer had taken his pleasure in the planning, in Lita’s execution. He