Page 51 of Take This to Your Grave

“Clearly.” She banks a hard left onto the main road. “Next time, process on Main Street.”

I ignore her, leaning back in the passenger seat. My legs are caked in that iron-rich red dust, and a sharp, stinging sensation in my right shin catches my attention. I hoist my foot up, resting my heel on the edge of the dash to inspect the damage. A jagged flake of shale is embedded in the skin just below my knee, the edges dark with dried blood.

As I shift to get a better angle, my foot slips and knocks against the latch of the glovebox. It’s an older model, the mechanism loose and overworked. The door drops open spilling a mess of napkins, stray papers, and a small, heavy object that hits the floor mat with a thud.

I reach down, fingertips skimming the grime-coated floor until they find it. It’s cold against my skin. Heavier than it looks.

“What’s this?” I ask, holding it up. It’s a dull, grayish hunk of metal and high-density plastic, roughly the size of my palm, encrusted with a layer of dried mud and maybe road salt.

Mara glances over, her brow furrowing as she navigates a pothole. “That? I don’t know. Just some junk I kicked up near the shoulder of the road last week. I found it near where Nole was pulled over. I figured it was a part from his car—a CV joint or a mounting bracket or something. I tossed it in there and forgot about it.”

I turn the object over in my hand. I rub my thumb over the curved surface, clearing away the years of buildup.

It’s not a car part.

“You found this at the arrest site?” I ask. “Mara, why wasn't this bagged? Why isn't this in the evidence locker with the rest of the scene recovery?”

Mara looks mortified, a faint flush creeping up her neck. She keeps her eyes fixed on the road, one hand tight around the wheel while the other fiddles with the St. Michael pendant she’s worn for as long as I can remember. I’ve never understood the choice. Mara isn’t particularly religious. “Because it’s trash, Serena. It’s a piece of scrap metal from a roadside ditch. The guy was a graverobber. I didn’t think a piece of broken axle carried much weight after what we found in his truck.”

I look at her, and for a split second, she looks incredibly guilty—not of some larger conspiracy, but of the kind of small-town negligence that has been suffocating this case from the beginning.

Mara may not know what this is, but I sure as fuck do. I’ve seen a handful of these pass through my lab, usually cleaned and sterilized, sitting in stainless steel trays under fluorescent lights.

It’s an artificial knee joint.

Specifically, a posterior-stabilized prosthetic made of cobalt-chromium and polyethylene. My mind flashes back to freshman year—Casey, pale and frustrated in a hospital bed, laughing about how she’d probably set off every airport metal detector for the rest of her life after her climbing fall in ninth grade.

I use the hem of my shirt to scrub at the medial side of the titanium femoral component. The erosion is bad, the metal pitted from exposure to the elements, but the engraving is deep.

As the dust clears, the alphanumeric string stares back at me.

Serial Number: XJ-8824-09.

Guess I won’t have to wait on the lab, after all.

Serena: I just got trapped inside a restricted utility enclosure.

Serena: I had to be rescued by Mara.