Die a Little (18 page)

"It's private," I say quietly, through the veil. "Is he in?"

The deputy looks at me again, then pushes the button, speaking into the microphone: "Cudahy ... someone to see you."

I sit on the adjacent bench to wait. It is several minutes before a shiny-faced man with a gritty scrub of red-blond hair walks toward me, sleeves rolled up over his red forearms. He pauses at the station desk for a moment, conferring with the deputy.

"Miss? Come with me," he says at last, waving his arm.

He lets me pass in front of him, then guides me into a small office that smells of burnt coffee and Lysol.

He leans against the front of the desk as I sit down across from him.

"So ...?" he says.

"I'm not sure ... I hope I'm not wasting your time.

Die a Little -- 113 --

"Not yet," he says with a faint smile.

"This Linda Tattersal. From the papers. I may ... may know her."

"But you're not sure," he says, pushing the door shut with his outstretched leg.

"I know a woman named Lois who lived in Rosecourt."

"That so?"

"At the Locust Arms."

"I see," he says, arms folded across his chest. "You always wear a veil like that in this heat?"

I feel my face turn warm. I try to lift the veil, catching it on my eyelashes.

"Let me help," he says, reaching out and pushing the veil up. My hand wavers.

"So you know a Lois in Rosecourt, huh?"

"I do. I mean, she did live there, at those apartments. And she fits the physical description."

"She's a friend of yours."

I pause, looking at him. "Listen. All I'm suggesting is that I think it may be her. They may be the same person."

"How do you know this Lois?"

"I'm sorry, I ..." I tug at my skirt. "I guess I don't see how that matters. Don't you want to find out if it's the same girl?"

"Why? Did someone want to hurt your friend?" He cocks his head.

"I just... if it's Lois, my Lois, she ... she had scars."

"Lots of people have scars, Miss ... I'm sorry, what's your name?"

"Okay, she'd have specific scars. She'd have lots of them. On her arms. Needle marks."

"That was in the papers, yeah."

I twist in my seat. "She'd also have them other places."

"Yeah?"

"She'd have them all kinds of places. Behind her knees. Between her toes. On her neck." I find myself pointing two fingers to my own neck.

"She'd have them everywhere," I finish.

His arms drop a little.

"And she'd have a cigarette burn, right here." I touch my collarbone lightly.

"And dermatitis on her legs. Maybe old burns on her thighs from a fire."

His arms fall, and he reaches out for a pad of paper and pen.

Die a Little -- 114 --

"And she'd have scar tissue from ... from several abortions." This is little more than a guess but a confident one ("I've had my insides scooped out clean after four bad turns ...").

He meets my eyes.

"Okay, Miss, we'd better start here," he says as he grabs the phone, barking into the receiver, "Get me the morgue."

And it's this. It's this:

Could that thing there, that block of graying flesh, be Lois? Could it be a woman at all? The morgue attendant picks pieces of dust and gravel from the place her face had been. He's trying to get a footprint.

"I think after he does her, he kicks her over on her face with his foot," the attendant says.

He says this to Detective Cudahy.

I'm standing in the corner.

"I didn't know you were working on her right now," says Cudahy.

He looks at me

From the side, from where I've backed up, nearly to the far wall, it looks like she has a big flower in her hair, like Dorothy Lamour. A big blossom, dark and blooming.

If I don't focus, don't squint, I can pretend it's a flower and not a hole, a gaping cavity.

"It's going to be hard to tell," he says. "But try your best." He reaches his hand out, summoning me over with lowered eyes.

"She was a mess even before," the attendant notes, tilting his head. "Her skin ..."

I touch my fingertips to my mouth as I walk over. I wonder if there's any way at all that I will be able to look long enough to tell.

"There's no ..." What I want to say is that there's no face there.

There's nothing there at all. But I can't quite get the words out.

Instead, I just stare down into the shiny, blackened pit before me.

"You want to focus on the rest of her," Cudahy says quietly. "Body size, shape. The places you remember scars."

I look at the stippled body, I look at its pocks and wounds. I look--

knowing this will be it for me--at the hands. Lois's stubby little hands, her doll fingers with her strangely square fingertips. They're there, right in front of me. They're little doll hands, and they're covered with ink, torn at the tips in places, ragged and stringy at the edges but definitely hers. They're Lois's hands.

I teeter back slightly on my heels. Cudahy's hand is pressed on my back, holding me up. My head swims and then I see the welts on her breasts and below her belly. I see them and I remember the Rest E-Z

Motel. I remember everything.

Die a Little -- 115 --

"So it's her, huh?" A voice sounds out.

"It's her," another voice answers.

It's my own.

"We'll need to start at the top," Detective Cudahy says, uncapping his pen and smoothing a rough hand over a pad of lined paper.

"Right."

"What's your full name?"

This is when I realize the extent of what I have done. And this is when I find myself not knowing why I feel the need to lie. But I do feel I need to lie.

"Susan. Willa. Morgan," I say slowly, pulling each part from my class roster. Susan Wiggins, Willa Johnston, and Eleanor Morgan will never know the dark tunnels into which their names have been thrown,

"Age?"

"Twenty-eight."

"Married?"

"No."

"How did you know the victim?"

"She used to come into a nightclub I go to sometimes." I am on eerie autopilot, unsure from where I am getting the words coming out of my mouth. My voice even sounds different: vaguely brittle and with a slight lilt.

"What nightclub?"

"The Red Room Lounge.

"In Rosecourt?"

"No, Hollywood. It's on Hollywood Boulevard."

"She told you her name was Lois?"

"Yes."

"Last name?"

"She never said." I don't know why I lie about this. I'm going solely by instinct. Somehow I want him to think I didn't know her well, not well at all. If I knew her well enough to know her last name, wouldn't I have known enough to stop--

"What was she doing there?"

"Passing the time," I say with a shrug.

"Is that what you were doing there?" he asks, scribbling, not meeting my gaze.

I straighten in my seat. "I would go with my girlfriends. Sometimes on a date."

"What kinds of dates?" He looks up at me with a slight pause.

Die a Little -- 116 --

"Kinds of dates? What do you mean?"

He looks at me for a moment. "Skip it," he says, returning to his writing pad. "How regular would you see her there?"

"Once or twice a month."

"How'd you happen to talk with her?"

"I don't know. I think maybe someone I was with knew her or vice versa. I really can't remember."

"What kinds of things did you talk about?" He continues writing.

"Girl stuff. Hair, men." I try a smile. "She was doing some acting and modeling."

"Modeling?"

"That's what she said."

"What do you do?"

"Pardon? What?"

"Do you have a job?"

'Yes, I ... I give sewing lessons." I don't know where this comes from.

He writes something down. Then, "Did she ever tell you about any men she dated? Men she knew?"

"Yes." Here is my chance. "She told me once about a man who would ... do things to her."

"Things?"

"She would have burn marks. He would burn her."

"With cigarettes?"

'Yes."

"Did they use narcotics together?"

"I don't know."

"But you knew she used them.'

"I saw the marks."

"And you knew what they meant?"

"I don't use narcotics, Detective, if that's what you mean."

"Was she very scared of this guy?"

"I guess. She must have been. But she'd been, you know, around the block a few times. Nothing much surprised her."

"Did she tell you anything about this man? What he did? Where he lived?"

"He worked in the movies," I say, tightening my fingers over my purse. "He worked for a studio."

"Which studio?"

"I don't know. She worked for RKO and Republic. I do know that."

Die a Little -- 117 --

"So you think he did, too? Did you get the idea he might have got her jobs?"

"I don't know."

"Did she tell you anything else about him?"

"No."

"When was the last time you saw her?"

"A few weeks ago." Here, because it seems easier, safer, I just lie.

Somehow telling him about the recent episode at the Rest E-Z Motel seems too risky, too involved.

"At the Red Room Lounge?"

"Yes. Right. The Red Room."

He pushes a piece of paper over at me.

"I want all your information and any names you can remember of anyone you ever saw her with. Don't forget your phone number and address."

I stare at the paper for a second. Then, I take the pen and begin writing.

"So." He leans back, stretching his arms a bit as I write. "How do you think she ended up in water?" I look up with a start.

"Water?"

"So you don't know everything, Miss Morgan?"

I feel my hand shake around the pen.

"I don't know anything. What water?"

"You tell me. Your friend drowned."

Die a Little -- 118 --

[?]*[?]

My head is throbbing when Detective Cudahy hands me the glass of warmish water. I can't keep my lies straight. I slide my hat off my head and into the palm of my hand. It is moist where my forehead has strained against it.

'You're telling me she didn't die from being ... from being shot."

Unconsciously, I touch my hand to my own face.

"The shot was postmortem."

"So it was all an accident? She just drowned?"

"I don't think so. Accidental drowning victims don't usually end up with their faces blown off."

"Why was she shot then?"

He tilts his head. "Could be to try and prevent identification of the body. Or he's just in a violent rage. It's hard to tell just yet. She wasn't in the water that long. Just long enough to fill her lungs and sink her like a stone."

I twitch, involuntarily. "But the papers ..."

"She was found in the Hills, but we kept the water stuff out of the press. It may help down the line."

"So she drowned and then someone shot her and then just ... just dumped her there?"

"Far as we can tell."

"Drowned in the ocean?"

"Salt water."

"What would Lois have been doing in the ocean?"

"Thought maybe you could tell me. Her boyfriend have a boat?"

"I don't... know," I say, trying to process it all. Trying not to think of Lois, face in dark water, floating.

"Maybe you'll ask around for us." He looks at me hard in the eyes.

"In your circles, you might be able to find out things we can't."

At this, I almost want to laugh.

"I'll try. I will," I reply, not knowing what I mean by it.

You have to ask it: Who would cry for Lois Slattery, with all her slurry glamour, her torn and fast-fading beauty--beauty mostly because you could see it vanishing before your eyes? Her loss meant nothing and she would not be missed, not even by me. I wouldn't miss her--not in a way as true as she deserved.

Die a Little -- 119 --

But there was something that lingered, her whole life a dark stain, spreading. A pulsing energy racked tight and always threatening to burst through its borders, its hems, its ragged, straining edges. She would have been happy to know how ripely powerful she would become in death. She had been waiting for it.

Die a Little -- 120 --

[?]*[?]

The next day ... the next day, very early, I am walking from the office to my classroom. I'm thinking of how many days it's been since I've seen Mike Standish, how many calls of his I've left unreturned. He is filled with the promise of distraction. But now is not a time for distraction.

I'm walking through the still-empty hallways when I feel her. I feel her even before I see her, hear her. She's leaning against the door of my classroom, humming and patting her nose with a powder puff from the ivory compact in her hand.

"So our carpool days are over," she says evenly, looking only in the mirror.

"I have a lot of new responsibilities," I say, walking closer.

"I understand," she says, snapping the compact shut and looking at me.

I try so hard to read her, to read the look in her eyes. I try so hard I feel I'll bore through.

But she just smiles impersonally, superbly, like a showroom model, a beauty queen.

"Well, let's not forget, Lora."

"Forget what?"

"About us. Sisters," she says. "About how we're sisters."

Alice pulls open my classroom door for me. A draft whistles through from within.

"Who could forget?" I say, hard. "Who could forget that?"

She only smiles in return, and in her smile I can see nothing, not a stray flicker of fear or anger or anything at all. But what I now know is this: There's a reason she's wearing this blankness, this mechanical look stripped of her heat, energy, her intermittent chaos.

There's a reason she's wearing this face. And I'm the reason.