Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult

was at the heart of her.
    It was four in the morning by the time Lizzie entered the hospital room, but Katie was awake and alone. She turned wide blue eyes to the detective, surprised to see her. “Hello.”
    Lizzie smiled and sat down beside the bed. “How are you feeling?”
    â€œBetter,” Katie said quietly. “Stronger.”
    Lizzie glanced down at Katie's lap, and saw the Bible she'd been reading. “Samuel brought it for me,” the girl said, confused by the frown on the other woman's face. “Isn't it allowed in here?”
    â€œOh, yeah, it's allowed,” Lizzie said. She felt the tower of evidence she'd been neatly stacking for twenty-four hours now start to waver: She's Amish . Could that one excuse, that one glaring inconsistency, knock it down? “Katie, did the doctor tell you what happened to you?”
    Katie glanced up. She set her finger in the Bible, closed the book around it with a rustle of pages, and nodded.
    â€œWhen I saw you yesterday, you told me you hadn't had a baby.” Lizzie took a deep breath. “I'm wondering why you said that.”
    â€œBecause I didn't have a baby.”
    Lizzie shook her head in disbelief. “Why are you bleeding, then?”
    A red flush worked its way up from the neckline of Katie's hospital johnny. “It's my time of the month,” she said softly. She looked away, composing herself. “I may be Plain, Detective, but I'm not stupid. Don't you think I'd know if I had a baby?”
    The answer was so open, so earnest, that Lizzie mentally stepped back. What am I doing wrong? She'd questioned hundreds of people, hundreds of liars—yet Katie Fisher was the only one she could recall getting under her skin. She glanced out the window, at the simmering red of the horizon, and realized what the difference was: This was no act. Katie Fisher believed exactly what she was saying.
    Lizzie cleared her throat, manning a different route of attack. “I'm going to ask you something awkward, Katie … Have you ever had sexual relations?”
    If at all possible, Katie's cheeks glowed brighter. “No.”
    â€œWould your blond friend tell me the same thing?”
    â€œGo ask him,” she challenged.
    â€œYou saw that baby yesterday morning,” Lizzie said, her voice thick with frustration. “How did it get there?”
    â€œI have no idea.”
    â€œRight.” Lizzie rubbed her temples. “It isn't yours.”
    A wide smile broke over Katie's face. “That's what I've been trying to tell you.”
    â€œShe's the only suspect,” Lizzie said, watching George stuff a forkful of hash browns into his mouth. They were meeting at a diner halfway between the county attorney's office and East Paradise, one whose sole recommendation, as far as Lizzie could tell, was that they only served items guaranteed to double your cholesterol. “You're going to give yourself a heart attack if you keep eating like that,” she said, frowning.
    George waved away her concern. “At the first sign of arrhythmia I'll ask God for a continuance.”
    Breaking off a small piece of her muffin, Lizzie looked down at her notes. “We've got a bloody nightgown, a footprint her size, a doctor's statement saying she was primiparous, an ME saying the baby took a breath—plus her blood matches the blood found on the baby's skin.” She popped a bite into her mouth. “I'll put five hundred bucks down saying that when the DNA test comes back, it links her to the baby, too.”
    George blotted his mouth with a napkin. “That's substantial stuff, Lizzie, but I don't know if it adds up to involuntary manslaughter.”
    â€œI didn't get to the clincher yet,” Lizzie said. “The ME found bruising on the baby's lips and fibers on the gums and in the throat.”
    â€œFibers from what?”
    â€œThey matched the shirt it was wrapped in. He thinks that the two, together,