Free Last Look by Mariah Stewart Page B

opposite side of the body where her gaze lingered on the right thigh and arm. Andrew watched her without comment. When she raised her eyes to his, she said softly, “She was a cutter.”
    “You saw that, too?”
    “Probably used a razor blade—see how very thin the scars are?” She pointed with a gloved index finger to the lines that went up and down the woman’s arms and the tops of her thighs like the pale, uneven rungs of a ladder.
    “Judging by the scars, I’d say she’d been doing it for a very long time,” Andrew noted. “Some scars have long healed, some have been reopened more than once. Some recently, I’d say.”
    “Interesting that it appears she might have stopped for a while, then started again.” She pointed to several long marks on Shannon Randall’s upper thigh.
    “Right. These are fresh. And here, on her upper arm, close to her shoulder?” Andrew studied the scars intently. “Almost all of the others are old.”
    “I noticed those,” Fuller nodded, “but I don’t recall having had this type of thing before. Read about cutting, but haven’t ever seen it firsthand. We don’t get a whole lot of kids in here, not like this. Most young people have left town, moved on before they reached this age.”
    “She cut for a long time, then stopped long enough for all those old scars to heal over and stay healed. Then something happened to make her start cutting again.” Dorsey seemed to mull it over. “So maybe whatever caused her to start cutting in the first place, whatever it was she’d gotten over sufficiently that she didn’t feel she had to hurt herself anymore—somehow, that
whatever
was back in her life.”
    Both men stared at her. She stood up straight and pulled off the gloves.
    Andrew did the same, turned to Doctor Fuller. “We really appreciate your time, Doctor Fuller.”
    “Anytime, Agent Shields. I’m going to have to release the body to the family soon—thought they’d be wanting it sooner than this, frankly. I suspect there’s some kind of to-do going on right about now, what with the young lady having been a hooker and one of her sisters being a preacher—”
    “Her sister?” Dorsey frowned. “I thought her father was the minister.”
    “He had been, up until just a couple of years ago. Car accident left him paralyzed. Heard all about it from the director of the funeral home up there in Hatton, where the Randalls are from.” Fuller covered the body with the sheet and slid the shelf back into the refrigerated drawer. “Hit and run. Car ran him off the road, then disappeared. Never even stopped. They figured it must have been a drunk driver. The man never saw it coming, apparently. Hasn’t walked since. It was the youngest daughter who took over the church.”
    “I think I remember more than two children in the family,” Dorsey said, trying to think back to her early teens when the story was fresh in her mind.
    “There are three sisters. Four daughters altogether. Oldest’s a state senator up in South Carolina now—she’s the one who identified the body. Another sister does something on television. And of course, the minister. Can’t recall the funeral director saying much more than that.”
    “Quite an accomplished family,” Andrew remarked as he and Dorsey headed toward the door.
    “Yes, so it would seem.” Fuller peeled off his gloves and dropped them into the wastebasket next to his desk. “It’s had me wondering how a girl from a family like that ends up like this girl did.”
    “Girls from all kinds of backgrounds end up like Shannon Randall, Doctor Fuller. There’s no easy answer why,” Andrew replied.
    “True enough.” Fuller nodded.
    “What was the sister’s demeanor when she came to make the identification?”
    “Solemn, I’d say,” the doctor replied after pondering the question for a moment. “Sober. Respectful.”
    “Emotional?”
    “No, wouldn’t have called her emotional.” Fuller shook his head from side to side. “She