Page 95 of This is Why We Lied

Sara felt like they all needed a break. “Let’s take a look.”

Nadine was visibly relieved. She lowered her mask and took off her gloves as she walked toward the desk. Sara waited until the woman had logged into the computer to stand behind her. A few clicks brought Mercy’s X-rays onto the screen. They were little more than thumbnails, but yet again, the history of abuse was writ large.

Sara was not surprised by the old fractures, but the number was substantial. Mercy’s right femur had been fractured in two different places, but not at the same time. Some of the bones in her left hand looked like they had been deliberately hammered in two. Screws and plates were in multiple locations. The top of her skull and occipital bones had been fractured. Her nose. Her pelvis. Even her hyoid bone showed signs of an old injury.

Nadine picked up on this last one. She enlarged the image. “A snapped hyoid is a sign of strangulation. I didn’t know you could live with it broken.”

“It’s a potentially life-threatening injury,” Sara said. The bone was attached to the larynx and was involved in a lot of airway functions, from producing sound to coughing to breathing. “This looks like an isolated fracture to the greater horn. She could’ve been intubated or put on bed rest, depending on how she was presenting.”

Amanda provided, “When Faith was interviewing Dave, he told her that Mercy drove herself to the hospital after a strangulation episode. She was having difficulty breathing and was admitted.”

“I took that report,” Biscuits called from the doorway. “Happened at least ten years ago. Mercy didn’t say anything about being strangled. She told me she tripped over a log. Smashed into her neck.”

Amanda gave Biscuits a pointed look. “So why were you called to take a report?”

Biscuits said nothing.

Sara went back to the X-rays, asking, “Can you show me this fracture?”

Nadine selected the image of the femur bone.

“I’d want a forensic radiologist to weigh in, but that looks decades old.” She pointed to the faint line bisecting the lower half of the bone. “An adult fracture generally shows sharp edges, but if it’s older, say dating back to childhood, the bone remodels and rounds out the edges.”

Amanda asked, “Is that unusual?”

“Femur fractures in children tend to be shaft fractures. The femur is the strongest bone in the body, so it takes a high-energy collision to break it.” Sara referred to the film. “Mercy suffered from a distal metaphyseal fracture. There’s been a lot of debate about whether or not this kind of fracture indicates abuse, but the recent research isn’t dispositive.”

Biscuits asked, “What does that mean?”

Nadine said, “Cecil broke her leg when she was a baby.”

“Hey now, she didn’t say who did it,” Biscuits countered. “Don’t go blabbing stuff you can’t back up with facts.”

Nadine let out a long breath as she clicked open two more thumbnails. “This metal plate in her arm is from the car accident I told you about. And this one—see here where they had to reconstruct her pelvis? Good thing she’d already had Jon.”

Sara stared at the abdominal X-ray. Mercy’s pelvic bones were a stark white against the black, the vertebrae laddering up into the ribcage. The organs were in shadow. The faint outline of the small and large intestines. The liver. The spleen. The stomach. The ghostly blur of a small mass, maybe two inches long, showing early signs of ossification.

Sara had to clear her throat before she could speak. “Nadine, could you help me finish the rape exam before we turn her?”

Nadine looked confused, but she grabbed another pair of gloves before joining Sara at the table. “What do you need me to do?”

Sara didn’t need her to do anything but revert to her comforting silence. There was an ultrasound machine in the hallway, but Sara wasn’t going to ask for it with Biscuits in the room. Nadine had delivered a short lecture on Old Bachelor Trail about the glue that fixed life in a small town, but she had forgotten one very important lesson: there was no such thing as a secret.

Sara would have to use a pelvic exam to confirm what she had seen on the X-ray.

Mercy was pregnant.

13

“Fuckity-fuck-fuck.” Faith tried not to bang her head against the steering wheel of her Mini. The storm had finally passed, but the gravel road had turned into a muddy nightmare. Rocks kept dinging into the side panels. The steering felt slippery. She looked up at the sky. The sun was brutal, like it wanted to suck back up as much water into the clouds as possible.

She had shot herself in the foot by volunteering to interview Penny Danvers, the cleaner and bartender at the lodge, but Faith hated autopsies. She attended them because it was her job, but every single part of the examination grossed her the hell out. She had never been able to get used to being around dead bodies. Which was how she’d ended up driving through the backroads of Bumfuck, North Georgia, instead of taking a victory lap for her excellent detective work interviewing Dave McAlpine.

She silently chastised herself. A better outcome would’ve been a confession or a giant clue that pointed to the killer so that Jon had closure. This wasn’t a game of good guys vs. bad guys. Mercy had been a mother. Not just a mother, but a mother like Faith. They had both given birth to sons when they were barely more than children themselves. Faith had been lucky that her family had supported her. Without their strength holding her up, she could’ve just as easily ended up like Mercy McAlpine. Or maybe even trapped with a reprehensible abuser like Dave. Shitty men were like periods. Once you had your first one, your life was consumed by dread or panic over when it would show up again.

Faith glanced at the open notebook on the passenger’s seat. Before she’d left the hospital, she’d worked with Will to incorporate Mercy’s calls to Dave with Will’s ballpark times about what he’d heard and from where. They’d managed to construct what was probably a close guess of the last hour and a half of Mercy McAlpine’s life:

10:30: Seen making rounds (Paul: witness)