The hole in her purse was too low.
Will would be anxious. He would want to see Brock’s hands at all times. She prayed that he would not come crashing through the door.
Brock asked, “Did you get the number you were looking for?”
She felt her eyebrows go up.
“For Delilah?” Brock said, “I asked Mama, but you know how forgetful she can be, bless her heart.”
Sara felt a quiver in her bottom lip. This was too normal. She couldn’t let this be normal.
“Sara?”
“Yes.” She had to push out the words. “I found her.”
“That’s good,” he said. “How’d Lucas and them treat you in Villa Rica this morning?”
She felt the surprise spread across her face. Lucas had assisted her with the exhumation of Shay Van Dorne.
He said, “Lucas uses AllCare for his embalming.”
Her lip would not stop quivering. She could not maintain this charade. “There was latex.”
He waited.
“Her t-teeth.” Sara stuttered again. “I found latex stuck in Shay’s teeth.”
Brock’s face was expressionless.
“From a condom,” she said. “Post-mortem.”
His face did not change. He straightened the green binders, making sure they were parallel to the edge of the desk. “You wanna hear something funny, Sara?”
She felt her stomach drop. She had pushed him too fast, too soon. She tried, “Brock—”
“After you left yesterday, I was thinking about the first time I realized you were my friend. I bet you didn’t even notice when it happened, did you?”
Sara couldn’t do this. “Dan, please.”
“You were always so kind to me. You were the only one who was ever kind.” His voice had taken on a wistful tone. “I remember thinking, well, that Sara Linton is kind to everybody, and I was an everybody, so that’s why I was included. But then one day, you stood up for me. Do you remember what you did?”
She had to bite her lip to stop the quiver. What was he doing? She had told him about the latex. Ezra Ingle had probably shared the details of Alexandra McAllister’s exam. Brock had read the text about Tommi Humphrey that Sara had accidentally sent to him instead of her mother.
“We were in sixth grade.” Brock held up his hands, wagged his fingers. “Coach Childers.”
Sara felt a distant memory creep into her consciousness. Childers had been a farmer. He’d supplemented his income at the school. “He got caught in a combine.”
“That’s right. The rollers on the corn picker pulled him in. Sheared off all his fingers on one hand. Ripped his other arm clean off,” he said. “Poor fella bled to death before anybody could save him.”
Sara shook her head. What was the point of this? Why was he telling her this story?
“I remember when Daddy wheeled Coach Childers into the basement. I wasn’t allowed down there on my own, but I just had to see.” Brock chuckled, as if he was relaying a youthful indiscretion. “I waited until everybody was asleep, then I went down there and unzipped the bag. Coach Childers was lying there on his back. His arm was in a plastic bag on his chest. I guess they couldn’t locate the fingers.”
Sara remembered now. The day after Coach Childers had died, Brock had gotten onto the bus to a chorus of taunting children. They all knew the details of the accident. They knew where Coach Childers’ body had been taken.
She said, “Dead man’s hands.”
Brock’s smile had no joy in it. “That’s right. That’s what they kept saying. Dead-man’s-hands, dead-man’s-hands.”
He waved his hands the same way the children had. Brock had suffered through their malicious teasing for weeks.
He asked, “Do you remember what you did?”
She tried to swallow. There was no spit left in her mouth. “I yelled at them.”
“You didn’t just yell at them. You stood up in the middle of that bus and you howled at all of them to shut the fuck up.” Brock laughed, as if he was still amazed. “I don’t think any of us had ever heard that word out loud before. Hell, most of us didn’t even know what it meant. My mama, she said, ‘Oh that Eddie Linton is a potty mouth cursing around them girls.’ But do you remember what happened next?”
This felt so normal. How could it feel normal?
She said, “I got detention.”
“You’d never been in trouble a day in your life.” His smile faltered. “You did that for me, Sara. That’s when I knew you were my friend.”
She pressed together her lips. The room felt hot. Sweat was pouring down her back. She didn’t know what to do, what to say. She begged, “Please.”
“Oh, Sara. I know this is hard.” Brock clasped together his hands on the desk. “I’m sorry.”
His voice was so familiar, so compassionate. She had heard him use the same comforting tone with countless mourners. She recalled it from her own experience the day she had gone to the funeral home to make arrangements for Jeffrey.
Brock said, “I took Coach’s arm into the woods with me.”
Sara concentrated on the anxiousness in his eyes. He had always been terrified of rejection. She tried to force off the switch in her head, to blunt her emotions.
“I was so lonely.” He was watching her, trying to test how far he could go. “I just wanted someone to be with. That’s all it ever was for me, Sara. I wanted somebody who couldn’t laugh at me or push me away.”
Her hand had gone to her mouth. Her mind refused to understand what he was saying.
He said, “It took me a while to figure out that blood is a lubricant.”
Vomit churned into Sara’s throat. She swallowed it back down, trying to steel herself. She could not recoil from him. She had to keep him talking. This was for the families. This was for the victims they did not know about.
“You make a puncture here.” Brock rubbed his fingers across his chest. “Then you press down, and blood fills the mouth.”
Her throat tensed. He was making it sound almost gentle, but
