“On these three victims, the children and their mother, I do think that’s right. I did the readings about eleven yesterday morning, before I got called for the delivery. At that time, their temps were all down about seven degrees, but a little of that must have been due to the ambient temperature, since they were outside and it was a chilly morning,” he explained. “The one that doesn’t fit is Laurel.”
I looked at him, puzzled. “Explain.”
“I’m not sure, Clara.” Doc had a habit of gesturing with the scalpel while we talked, and he used it to point at her on the table. “First off, Laurel was inside the house where it was warmer, so her body should have had a slightly warmer temp than the others if they were all murdered in close succession.”
“But Laurel’s wasn’t?”
Doc shook his head. He walked me over and pulled the sheet off of Laurel, and she had the same incision where he’d checked her liver temp. I looked again at the strange circle of red lipstick around her mouth. “Laurel’s body had cooled substantially more than the others,” Doc said. “Nine degrees more, sixteen degrees in all, to just a little more than eighty-two degrees. If we use the standard measurement of one point five degrees per hour, when we took her temp at eleven yesterday morning, she’d been dead for—”
“Eleven hours,” I said, finishing the sentence for him.
“Although that is, of course, nothing more than an estimate,” he said. “But it’s my best guess, and it is a rough guess, you know. These methods are never precise. But I’m thinking that Laurel died around midnight.”
That didn’t make a lot of sense. If Doc was right, whoever killed Laurel did so in the middle of the night and then came back at dawn and murdered Anna and the children and tried to kill Jacob. I wrote it all out in my notebook, the approximate times, the scenario as Doc thought it unfolded.
“Why would someone do that?” I asked.
“What?” Doc responded, as if not following me.
“Kill Laurel then return to murder the rest of the family?”
Doc smiled at me. “You know, Clara, that’s your problem to figure out. I’ve always been grateful that I do the autopsies, and you police officers have to solve the crimes.”
Twenty-Two
Mulling over what Doc had told me, I headed to my office. I didn’t expect to see what I did when I drove past the front of the building—a small group of women carrying signs, at least a couple I recognized from the shelter the night before, the ones who’d expressed doubt that I was the right choice for police chief. One sign read, Fire the Apostate! Another: Outsiders Won’t Protect Us! And a third: Take Our Town Back!
I considered the irony that, after all I’d been through in my short time back in Alber, someone would question that I wanted to help not hurt the town. I entered through the back door. Kellie stood behind the front desk, staring out at the protesters on the street. “Did you see them?” she asked. After I nodded, she asked, “Why are they doing that?”
“Because there have been four brutal murders. They’re worried and scared. That can bring out the worst in people,” I explained. “And because I was once one of them, but no longer. In this town, this culture, although I grew up a few miles from this police station, I am considered an outsider. And from childhood on, they’ve been taught that they can’t trust those who aren’t like them.”
A pause, and I thought for a moment about the day I left Alber, bruised and sore, tired and frightened. Was there another way? Should I have tried to find a different option? Did I have any choice other than to turn my back on my entire family? And didn’t I deserve some of what I was getting, since I’d run out on them without even saying goodbye?
Kellie got up and walked to the window. She stared wide-eyed at the women marching past the building. “But this is four people killed. It’s not something you can solve overnight. And you are working the case. Working hard. Why are they saying those things?”
I took a deep breath, thinking about how young she was, only nineteen. She had much to learn about life, about people.
“We know that I’m doing my best, but they don’t,” I said. “And the truth is that I don’t blame them for being worried. I