Chapter 7: A Match

By sunrise my street was full of cars with lights on top, and my house was wrapped in yellow tape.

I sat on the back of an ambulance in a borrowed blanket and watched strangers in white suits carry their equipment through my front door.

Neighbors stood on the sidewalk in robes, whispering.

One of them pointed at me.

Burke came across the lawn with a paper cup and put it in my hands.

It was tea, and it was too sweet.

"Drink it," he said.

I drank it.

"The medical examiner needs a name," he said. "A dental match is the fastest way. Do you have her chart?"

"At the office."

"Can you pull it?"

"I'm the one who made it," I said.

He winced, and then he took my elbow and walked me to his car.

An hour later I sat in a small gray room in the basement of the county building and handed a folder to a woman in a lab coat.

She laid out the x-rays on a light box and I stood beside her while she looked at the same tooth I had looked at on Monday.

Nine, upper left.

The edge was rounded, with a faint seam where the bonding met the enamel.

The woman in the lab coat held up the other film, the one they had taken that morning, and set it beside mine.

She didn't need long.

"It's a match," she said gently. "I'm so sorry."

I said thank you, because I didn't know what else a person says.

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