Criminal (18 page)

Evelyn had the grace not to look away. It was Amanda who couldn’t hold her gaze. She stared into the closet, the stacks of photographs showing gory scenes in sharp Kodachrome.

“Photos,” Amanda mumbled. Now it made sense. That’s why Evelyn had brought her here. “Roz was the crime scene photographer at Techwood yesterday.”

“The pictures are bad. Really bad. Jane—I mean Lucy—jumped from the top floor.”

“The roof,” Amanda provided. She had all the details from Butch’s report. “There’s an access ladder at the end of the hall. It goes up to a trapdoor in the roof. Lucy managed to bust off the padlock. Butch thinks she used a hammer. They found one on the floor at the bottom of the ladder. Lucy went to the roof and jumped.”

“Where would she get a hammer?”

“There weren’t any tools lying around the apartment,” Amanda remembered. “Maybe the repairmen used it for the broken skylight?”

“I suppose you’d need a hammer for that.” Evelyn sounded dubious. “Can a hammer bust a padlock?”

“Hammer?” Roz Levy was back. She held a manila envelope in her hand. “Those jackasses think she banged open the roof access with a hammer? Why not just jump out the window? She’s on the top floor. They think she’s so stoned she doesn’t take the easy way out?” She started to open the envelope, but stopped. Her eyes drilled into Amanda. “If you throw up on my carpet, you’re going to have to clean every inch. I don’t care if you have to use a toothpick.”

Amanda nodded, even as she felt a wave of nausea building. Her stomach was already sour. She dreaded to think what the beer would taste like coming back up.

“Are you sure?” Roz asked. “Because I’m not cleaning up after you. It’s bad enough I have to clean up after that jackass I married.”

Amanda nodded again, and the older woman pulled out the photographs. They were image side down.

Roz said, “A fall that high, you land on your feet, your intestines squirt out your ass like icing from a pastry bag.”

Amanda pressed her lips together.

“Your ears bleed. Your face rips off your skull like a mask. Your nose and mouth and eyes—”

“Oh, for goodness sakes.” Evelyn snatched the photos from Roz’s hand. She showed them to Amanda one by one. “Breathe through your mouth,” she coached. “Nice and easy. In and out.”

Amanda did just that, taking in gulps of stale air. She expected to faint. Honestly, she expected to end the afternoon on her hands and knees with a toothpick cleaning Roz Levy’s shag carpet. But neither of those things happened. The photos were unreal. What had happened to Lucy Bennett was too horrific for Amanda’s brain to accept that she was still looking at an actual human being.

Amanda took the photos from Evelyn. They were in vivid color, the flash so bright that every single detail was on display. The girl was fully clothed. The material of her red-checkered cotton shirt was stiff, glued to her skin. Her skirt was hanging down, the waistband broken. Amanda assumed this was subsequent to the fall, as was the girl’s missing left shoe.

She studied Lucy Bennett’s face. Roz had been right about a lot of things, but none more so than what jumping from a five-story building did to the skin on your skull. Lucy’s flesh looked to be dripping from the bone. Her eyes bulged from their sockets. Blood poured from every opening.

It looked fake, like something out of a horror movie.

Evelyn asked, “You okay?”

Amanda said, “Now I see why you thought this was Jane Delray.” Except for the bleached blonde hair, the Halloween mask of her face could’ve belonged to any girl walking the street. The track marks up her arms were the same. The open wounds on her feet. The red pricks along her inner thigh.

Evelyn said, “I wonder if she has family.”

Roz stated the obvious. “Everyone has family. Whether they admit it or not is an entirely different question.”

Amanda ran through the pictures again. There were only five of them. Three were of the girl’s face—left, right, center. One showed a close-up of her mangled body, probably taken from a ladder. The last was a more widely framed shot with the Coca-Cola building on the horizon. Lucy’s hand was turned out, her wrists exposed.

Amanda asked Roz, “Do you have any more photos?”

The older woman smiled. One of her upper teeth was missing. “Look at the bloodlust. Who would’ve guessed it?”

Amanda made her request more specific. “Do you have any close-ups of her wrists?”

“No. Why?”

“Does that look like a scar to you? There, along her wrist?” She showed Evelyn the photo.

Evelyn squinted, then shook her head. “I can’t tell. What are you getting at?”

“Jane had scars on her wrist.”

“I remember.” Evelyn studied the photo more carefully. “If this is Lucy Bennett, why would she have scars on her wrists like Jane Delray?”

“Whoring’s not exactly something to live for.” Still, Roz opened one of her desk drawers and found a magnifying glass. Each woman took turns holding the glass to the picture.

Finally, Evelyn said, “I still can’t tell. It looks like a scar, but maybe it’s the light?”

“That’s my fault.” Roz sounded uncharacteristically apologetic. “My flash was acting up and Landry was pushing me to hurry so he could clock in to his other job.”

Amanda supplied, “Butch didn’t say anything in his notes about scars.”

“That idiot wouldn’t.” Contrary to her words, Roz Levy seemed delighted. “All right, Wag. Time to see what you’re really made of.”

Another wave of dread washed over Amanda. She felt as if she was on a roller coaster.

Evelyn said, “Roz, there’s no need to—”

“Shut your pie hole, blondie.” Roz cackled like a witch. “Pete’s cutting up your dead whore this afternoon. You hotshot lady dicks want, I can make a call and get you a ringside seat to the autopsy.”

Amanda knew some of the patrolmen used the morgue as their crack, or on-duty hiding place, especially during the summer. It was easier to sleep in an air-conditioned building, so long as you didn’t mind laying up next to a dead body.

She’d been to the Decatur Street building many times to pick up reports and drop off evidence, but she’d never before been into the back. Just the thought of what went on there gave Amanda the heebie-jeebies. Still, she kept her mouth closed as Evelyn led her deep inside the building, even though every step felt as if it was ratcheting down a clamp around her rib cage.

The two beers Amanda drank on the drive over were not helping matters. Instead of relaxed, she felt both lightheaded and extremely focused. It was a miracle she hadn’t driven her Plymouth up a telephone pole.

“Do you know Deena?” Evelyn asked, pushing open a swinging door. They were in a small lab. Two tables were shoved into opposite corners in the back of the room. There was a microscope on each. Various medical tools were laid out beside them. A large window took up the back wall. The hospital-green curtains were pulled back to show what must be the autopsy room. Yellow tile ran along the floor and up to the ceiling. There were two metal sinks. Two scales that seemed more appropriate for a grocer’s produce section.

And a body. A green drape covered the figure. A large light like a dentist used was overhead. One hand dropped down beside the table. The fingernails were bright red. The hand was turned inward. The wrist did not show.

Evelyn said, “I hate autopsies.”

“How many have you seen?”

“I don’t actually look at them,” she confessed. “You know how you can blur your eyes on purpose?”

Amanda nodded.

“That’s what I do. I just blur my eyes and say ‘mm’ and ‘yes’ when they ask questions or point out something interesting, and then I go to the bathroom afterward and throw up.”

That seemed like as good a plan as any. They heard footsteps in the hallway behind them.

Evelyn said, “Deena’s got a bad scar on her neck. Try not to stare.”

“A what?” Evelyn’s words got jumbled up in Amanda’s brain, so they didn’t make sense until a striking black woman came through the door. She was wearing a white lab coat over blue jeans and a flowing orange blouse. Her hair was in full Afro. Blue eye shadow adorned her eyelids. The skin around her neck was marred as if by a noose.

“Hey, Miss Lady,” Deena said, setting down a tray on one of the tables. There were slides laid out, splatters of white and red sandwiched between the glass. “What are you doing here?”

Evelyn said, “Roz called in a favor for me.”

“Why you still talkin’ to that nasty old Jew?” She smiled warmly at Amanda. “Who’s your pretty friend?”

Evelyn looped her arm through Amanda’s. “This is Amanda Wagner. She’s my partner now.”

The smile dropped. “Any relation to Duke?”

For the first time in her life, Amanda felt the compulsion to lie about her father. Maybe if they’d been alone, she would have, but she confessed, “Yes. I’m his daughter.”

“Hm.” She shot Evelyn a look and turned back around to her slides.

“She’s all right,” Evelyn said. “Come on, Dee. Do you think I’d bring someone here who’d—”

The woman spun back around. Her lip trembled with rage. “You know how I got this?” She pointed to the ugly scar on her neck. “Working at the cleaners down on Ponce, pressing Klan robes nice and stiff for people like your daddy.”

Evelyn tried, “That’s hardly her fault. You can’t blame her for her father’s—”

Deena held up a hand to stop her. “One day, my mama got her arm caught in one’a the machines. Ain’t no way to turn ’em off. Mr. Guntherson’s too cheap to pay for an electrician. I grab the cord and it swings back on my neck. Live wires. Boom, there’s an explosion—one’a them transformers gives out. Shut down the whole block for two days. Saved my life, but not my mama’s.”

Amanda didn’t know what to say. She’d been to that same dry cleaners many times, had never given a thought to the black women working in the back. “I’m sorry.”

Evelyn said, “She can’t control what her father does.”

Deena leaned back against the table. She crossed her arms. “You remember what I told you about my scar, Ev? I said I’d cover it up the day it don’t matter anymore.” She glared at Amanda. “It still matters.”

Evelyn stroked Amanda’s back. “This is my friend, Deena. We’re working a case together, trying to find some missing women.” Her words were rushed. “Kitty Treadwell. Someone named Mary. They might be connected to Lucy Bennett.”

“You check the dead nigger file?” She was talking to Amanda. “That’s what y’all call it, right? The DNF? Got one at every station house. Ain’t that right, Wag?”

Amanda was too embarrassed to look at her. She told Deena, “I think you probably know that I lost my mother, too.” What had happened to Miriam Wagner was common knowledge around the force. With enough whiskey in him, Duke relayed the story with a heady machismo. Amanda said, “You’re not the only one here with scars.”

Deena tapped her fingers on the table. The staccato started strong, then died down to nothing. “Look at me.”

Amanda forced herself to look up. It had been so easy with Roz, but with the old Jew, there had been a sense of righteousness. Now, there was only guilt.

Deena studied her for a bit longer. The anger that had burned so hotly in her eyes started to fade. Finally, she nodded. “All right,” she said. “All right.”

Evelyn slowly exhaled. She had a tight smile on her face. As usual, she tried to smooth things over. “Dee, did I tell you what Zeke did the other day?”

Deena turned back to the trays. “No, what’d he do?”

Amanda didn’t listen to the story. She stared back into the morgue. Her mind was still clouded from the beer, or maybe just the traumas of the day. She felt as if something was shifting inside of her. The last few days had called into question the previous twenty-five years of her life. Amanda wasn’t sure whether or not this was a good thing. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure about anything anymore.

“Hello-hello!” a man’s voice boomed from inside the morgue.

“That’s Pete,” Evelyn supplied.

The coroner was pudgy, with a ponytail and beard that looked days past washing—as did his tie-dyed T-shirt and faded, torn blue jeans. His white lab coat was tight through the sleeves. A cigarette dangled from his lip. He stood at the window, showing his yellow teeth. Amanda was not one to believe in vibes, but even with a thick piece of glass between them, she could almost feel the creepiness radiating off Pete Hanson’s body.

He said, “Deena, my love, you’re looking beautiful as ever this afternoon.”

Deena laughed even as she rolled her eyes. “Shut up, fool.”

“Only a fool for you, my dear.”

Evelyn supplied, “They do this all the time.”

“Oh.” Amanda tried to pretend she heard white men flirting with black women every day.

“Come on, Dee.” Pete tapped on the window. “You gonna let me buy you that drink?”

“Meet me outside at ten-after-never.” She snatched the drapes closed. “Y’all go on in.” She told Amanda, “When you throw up, aim for the floor drain. It’s easier to hose down that way.”

“Thank you,” Amanda managed.

She followed Evelyn into the autopsy room. The temperature was as cold as expected, but it was the odor that caught Amanda off guard. It was clean, like Clorox and Pine-Sol mixed with apples; nothing like what she expected.

There had been two calls during her uniform days wherein she was sent out to take a missing persons report and found that person not far from the house. One had been a man who’d been locked in his trunk. The other had been a child who’d gotten trapped inside an old refrigerator on the family’s shed porch. Each time, Amanda had taken one whiff and called for backup. She did not know what happened to the cases. She was at the station filling out reports by the time the bodies were removed.

“Who is this elegant lady?” Pete Hanson asked, his eyes on Amanda.

“This is—”

“Amanda Wagner,” Amanda told him. “I’m Duke Wagner’s daughter.”

He paused a beat. “So you are,” he finally said. “Duke’s quite a character, isn’t he?”

Amanda shrugged. She was bruised enough about her father for one day.

“Pete.” Evelyn put on her cheery voice again, but her fingers snaked into her hair, giving a telltale sign of her discomfort. “Thanks so much for letting us watch. We were in Lucy’s apartment last Monday. We never met her, but it was quite a shock to learn about the suicide.”