Page 6 of Our Daughter's Bones

Her desk was always organized. Her notes were always color-coded. Everything in her life was ordered and categorized. She finished first in the academy. She could run one and a half miles in ten minutes. She worked on Christmas and Thanksgiving. She never relied on coffee or fast food, unlike her coworkers. Her red hair was always straight as an arrow. Her pantsuit showed no sign of crinkles. Her eyebrows were perfectly threaded. There wasn’t even a shadow on her upper lip. She never slumped. She never cried. She never lost her cool.

Shemustbe mad.

“Actually, why not? No one wants to see you drunk, Troy,” she teased him.

Troy smirked. “I’ll find the others.”

Ten minutes later, Detectives Finn, Ned, and Dennis were gathered around Mackenzie’s desk. Becky Sullivan, who led the Medical Examiner’s office, joined them. Having worked with Mackenzie and the other detectives on several cases, she had become good friends with the unit.

Sully stood, facing them, and raised his glass. “We all must be a little mad too for working till midnight. To Mad Mack!”

“To another bastard in prison,” Mackenzie corrected.

“To complaining wives at home!” Dennis raised his glass.

“And complaining husbands.” Becky cocked an eyebrow.

They clinked their glasses. Finn went to his cubicle behind Troy’s and connected his iPod. The song “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts blasted from his speaker.

Mackenzie sighed, defeated, while they laughed at her expense.

“Mack,” Ned said. “Sterling did a good job with Thatcher. Nailed him. You know how badly I wanted this guy gone.”

Mackenzie’s eyes skimmed over Ned’s aged face. Even though Ned was in his late forties, he looked at least a decade older. His breath was stale with the smell of cigarettes and coffee. The last twenty years of dealing with battered homemakers had left him scruffy.

Did Mackenzie’s scars show? Could someone look at her and guess what she had done? She hoped not. She put a lot of effort and time into looking immaculate. It wasn’t vanity; it was her armor.

“Sterling is good at his job,” she shrugged. “But this was all you, Ned. You’d been building a case against him for months. Don’t let my husband take any credit for your hard work.”

Ned smiled and gave her a pat on the back.

The champagne felt bubbly against her tongue. It wasn’t strong or heady. She sipped it slowly while Troy and Dennis watched the highlights of the football game on the internet, and Ned and Becky discussed their kids, who were in the same grade.

She spotted a water ring on her desk and furiously cleaned it with a cloth.

“Mack, I don’t think you realize how impressed the brass has been with you,” Sully said, taking away the cloth. “Relax tonight.”

“The Lieutenant, you mean?”

“Peck is a hard man to impress. I don’t think he likes me, but I don’t really give a damn about politics. You’re good at your job. I just want you to know that people are watching you. Maybe in the next few years, you’ll have my job. And of course, it helps to be married to an assistant district attorney.” He winked.

She dug her palm into the edge of the table and forced a smile. Being married to ADA Sterling Brooks had several perks—but one day, happiness had stopped being one of them.

Sully looked over his shoulder to the empty cubicle opposite Mackenzie’s and the picture pinned to the bulletin board. “Bruce retired at a bad time. Nick has been under a lot of pressure since he took over the case.”

“I wonder when we’ll find that girl.”

Two

September 12

The scraping sound of a knife slicing through vegetables and the sharp sting of the blade hitting the cutting board was comforting. Mackenzie chopped the carrots into fine pieces and dumped them in the blender.

Next came the tomatoes. The juice spurted and spilled. She stared at the red liquid trickling across the cutting board. It was lighter than her father’s blood. If she added some blueberries to the mix, the color would match.

Heavy footsteps thudded down the stairs. “Baby, have you seen my watch?”

She paused and looked at Sterling. His dark skin was stretched out tight over his strong facial bones. He was clean-shaven—exactly how she liked him. Underneath the gray suit, his muscles were bulging and rippling. He was at least half a foot taller than her. He looked like a cop, not a lawyer.