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be great for my reputation or really bad, depending on what they think of you.
But it means I don't actually have to risk finding out whether you really do
have a set of razor-sharp teeth in the lining of your-"
"You're a dog, Chapman," Mercer said.
"Unhand that woman, Mercer. Here she is, propositioning me-and you're trying
to hold her back."
"As far as I'm concerned, you either come home with me tonight or you stop
yapping about my sex life."
"I told you I'm just worried about Valentine's Day. You're gonna be cold and
lonely."
"I'm booked. You can relax."
"Who? What unwitting sucker stepped into the batter's box this time?"
The elevator doors opened and we got on. "Tell him nothing, Alex," Mercer
said.
Mike teased me all the way down to the lobby and out to his car. By the time
we reached the morgue, I had gotten him off the subject and back to the
sobering topic of Emily Upshaw's death.
Dr. Chet Kirschner, the chief medical examiner, left instructions for us to
use his office for our meeting with Emily's sister. The attendant admitted us,
and we found the woman sitting alone, her head bowed with eyes closed and her
fingers twisting an already crumpled handkerchief.
We introduced ourselves and explained our roles in the investigation. Sally
Brandon appeared to be close to fifty, taller and slimmer than her younger
sister. She had just viewed the body and was trying to compose herself as she
spoke to us.
Mike and Mercer answered most of the questions Brandon asked about her
sister's murder. Mercer took the lead; his firm but compassionate manner,
practiced with great frequency in the Special Victims Unit, was usually
comforting to victims and survivors. Mike's preference for working homicides
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was in no small measure based on his aversion to the emotional hand-holding
that always slowed down an investigation that he was eager to solve.
When the two of them ran out of answers for Sally Brandon, they started to
ask her about Emily.
"She was the youngest, Mr. Wallace. I'm seven years older, and our other
sister was right in between. We were a close family growing up, but when I
went off to college at eighteen, Emily was only eleven."
"What was your relationship like, as adults?"
Sally fumbled with the handkerchief. "We didn't have one, I'm afraid. I
married right after college and had children of my own. She moved to New York,
and that's when Emily really began to make my parents' lives miserable."
"In what way?"
She sighed before answering. "I'm still so resentful of all the trouble she
caused back then. It sounds pretty rough, I guess, now that she's dead."
"Tell us about it."
"Betsy and I-she's the middle sister-were a tough pair for Emily to follow.
Our parents were very serious, churchgoing Presbyterians, and we were the two
daughters who never caused them to lose a minute's sleep. Emily was a rebel
from the moment she hit adolescence. She hung out with a fast crowd of older
kids and started drinking by the time she was in middle school."
"Drugs, too?" Mercer asked.
"Nobody knew at the time. Just because no one in the family imagined anything
like that. I was away at college and don't even know what symptoms Emily was
presenting to them. Mother was in complete denial, and my father thought that
the power of prayer would solve all his concerns. Nobody talked about it."
"Did she stay in school?"
"That was the only thing that grounded her. Emily loved school, enjoyed
everything that had to do with books. She'd always been able to escape through
her writing." Sally Brandon stopping wrapping her handkerchief around her
finger and looked up at me. "Don't ask me how she did it, but she managed to
get high grades and test well, even when she was in the middle of a binge."
"Was she ever in treatment back home?"
She shook her head. "That wasn't a concept my parents understood. It would
have meant admitting that Emily had a problem."
"They ignored everything?"
"Not everything, Mr. Wallace. It was hard to look the other way when she was
six months pregnant."
"When was that, Mrs. Brandon?"
"During Emily's senior year of high school. Not that it should have come as a
great surprise to any of us, but it certainly shocked my parents. They
couldn't-" She stopped to compose herself before going on. "In their little
town of eighteen hundred people, it was unacceptable at the time. So they sent
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her to live with me."
"And she had her baby?"
Sally Brandon nodded and the tears started again. "A little girl. Yes."
"What became of the baby? Did she give her up for adoption?"
"No, Miss Cooper. I agreed to raise the child as my own. I had two boys at
the time. I took her into my family on one condition: that Emily never have
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