Page 24 of Half the Summer's Night
When my killer was here. With me.
I look over at my office, the door closed shut and the lights switched off. By this point, it’s been more than twelve hours, andI still haven’t taken the break-in to the authorities. I guess I have to accept that I’m simply not going to.
If a letter had been on Olivia Pearce, I would have. It would have been definite proof—look, I told you those others were murders. But there isn’t.
So, yes.Hedidn’t kill her.
But someone did.
Which strikes more worry in my chest. Because Olivia wasn’t just killed. She was tortured. She was arranged in one of the most prominent places in Rosado in a position of submission—kneeling, her hands tied behind her back, her skull split open.
I grip the side of the examination table, taking slow, deep breaths. I tell myself this is a coincidence, that this has nothing to do with the articles Olivia wrote in my defense ten years ago.
But it sounds absurd. It sounds like a lie. And I can’t shake the deep-rooted, shuddery feeling that Olivia is dead because of me.
I force myself to focus on my work. An autopsy is the first step in finding out who did this and getting justice for Olivia. So I began the slow, methodical process, starting with a visual examination.
“Probable cause of death,” I say numbly into my recorder. “Severe laceration to the head.”
Then I move closer, studying the patterns in the cuts: jagged, angry, a bit amateurish. The bruising is intense, too, and suggests she was tied up for several hours, a thought that makes me queasy enough that I have to stop, stepping over to my supply cabinet to take deep, long breaths.
I’ve always told myself I went to mortuary school because of Uncle Vic. Because he was here for me, in Rosado, when it felt like the entire world loathed me, even my parents. Because I found peace in the calm, gentle way he guided people throughtheir grief, the way he would spend hours applying makeup to the deceased so that they would look their best.
But it became clear to me early on that I’m not cut out to be a funeral director. That’s why I went on to study forensic science. I didn’t want to let go of working with the dead. And deep down, I’ve always wondered if that’s because my life was touched by death so early on. A deathIcaused, even if I didn’t mean to?—
You did mean to you knew he would fall down the stairs you did it on purpose
I squeeze my eyes shut, but it’s not enough to stop it, the sudden, terrible onslaught of memories. How Jessica and Ashley, who I thought were my friends, told Blake I had a crush on him. How he laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world, then called me a few weeks later and said he’d been thinking about me and did I want to come over? His parents weren’t home.
And I did.
I did, and he kissed me, jamming his tongue into my mouth. It was my first kiss. I thought it was how things were supposed to go, even though I didn’t really like it.
Then he started pulling my top off, and I told him to stop, and he hit me, hard, in the face. Hard enough that I had a black eye for a week. Ms. Staunton told me, two years later, that black eye helped save me.
Because it was photographable proof of what he did. Everything else he did, you couldn’t see. The way he slammed me against the wall and yanked my shorts down and shoved himself inside me while I was screaming at him to stop. The pain was blinding. I can almost feel it now, a lance of fire slicing between my legs.
I press my forehead against the cool wall, trying to remember what my therapist taught me when I was a teenager.
Breathe in for four. Breathe out for four.
But it’s like my lungs can’t get enough air. And I keep seeing it: how I wrenched away from him and shoved him. Not once, like I told everyone, even Ms. Staunton. But twice.
Once to get him off of me.
And then a second time, when I realized he was lined up with the top of the stairs.
My stomach lurches, and I vomit up the remains of the lunch I nibbled at earlier. The splat of it against the floor slams me back into the present.
I’m not sixteen years old. I have not just been raped. I have not just killed the boy who raped me.
I’m twenty-six. I’m a grown woman. I graduated from high school early and went on to study mortuary science and then forensics. I’m a professional.
You let a killer put his hands on you, and you didn’t fucking stop him.
I rise on shaking legs. Olivia Pearce is still lying out on my examination table. I haven’t even cut her open yet.
I should have asked to have her sent to Magnolia. I don’t think I’m strong enough to handle this.
