Everything You Want Me to Be(7)
I sat up all night long thinking about that body. If I dozed off a little, I didn’t remember it. I made notes and lists of people to talk to and watched the clock turn slowly toward 7:00 a.m., while the cat’s tail twitched.
“Well, Sheriff Goodman, whose remains should I thank for the honor of this visit?”
Dr. Frances Okada hadn’t changed. Sure, her hair was a silvery bun now and there was a stoop in her back, but she still sauntered around the morgue like the unholy queen of the dead and she still separated my name—“Good man”—like it was some great joke nobody got except her.
“That’s the same question I’ve been waiting to ask you for an hour while I sat in that damn lobby, Fran.”
“Yes, such a shame for you that this young man”—she tossed her head in the direction of a body in the corner that a technician was working over—“had the nerve to have an aneurysm during his baseball practice last night. He should’ve had the courtesy to check your schedule first.”
I walked over to the table wordlessly. My mother always told my sisters and me that silence ends an argument quicker than words. It worked pretty well with snooty medical examiners, too, and pain in the ass or not, Fran was going to give me an ID. Bud and Mona were waiting.
The body had changed again. She was gray under the lab lights and the bloating had gotten worse. She didn’t look like anyone anymore, let alone Hattie.
“I sent your girl down to Radiology as soon as she arrived. These are her teeth.” She slid the pictures into the viewer. “And here’s the film that arrived on your suspected victim, Henrietta.”
“Hattie,” I corrected, stepping forward to inspect the pictures.
“See the cavity here and here.” She pointed to both sets. “The fillings are a spot-on match and there’s an identical profile from either side.”
Fran’s finger lingered on a slightly crooked tooth in the bottom jaw. “There’s no need to go to DNA for this one. She’s Henrietta.”
“She’s Hattie.” It came out a little angrier than I meant.
“I’d estimate she was dead for twelve to eighteen hours before she was discovered, judging by the rate of decomp.” Fran snapped on a new set of gloves and her voice softened a bit. “You knew her?”
“Doesn’t matter now, does it? I need a full workup with a mind toward murder. Foreign blood, hair, anything she’s got on her that can point somewhere. And I need it quick, you understand? Call me when it’s ready.” I was already on my way out the door.
“Why don’t you just stay and witness the autopsy for yourself?”
I glanced back to see she was finally looking me straight in the eye, standing like a guardian over the disfigured remains that, two days ago, had been Hattie.
“I’ve got something to do.”
Bud’s truck was there when I pulled into the driveway, even though it was still early on Sunday morning and church couldn’t have let out yet. Bear, their black Lab, came panting at my leg for his usual scratch behind the ears as I headed up to the house. I didn’t look at him. Before I’d gotten halfway up the sidewalk, Mona jerked the door open.
She wore a big flowery apron and her hair was tied back with a handkerchief. She was the only woman her age I knew who kept her hair long, and it made her seem timeless somehow. She had a strong, calm face and a manner to match, but today there were tremors behind her eyes.
“Well?” She bit it out.
“Mona.” I removed my hat. “Is Bud around, too?”
“Just say it, Del.” Her fingers rapped a rhythmless beat on the side of her thigh while she stood as rigid as a board. It was like her fingers didn’t belong to the rest of her, and I had a bad flash of Hattie half in, half out of the water, her strange dead body disconnected from itself.
“Can I come in?”
“Course, Del.” Bud appeared behind Mona and opened the door wider. He took his wife by the shoulders and backed her up so I could get by. She shook him off and went into the living room ahead of us.
Once I stepped inside, the smell of butter and chocolate overwhelmed me. The kitchen was full of cookies—pinwheels and chocolate chip and sugar cutouts stacked on plates all over the room.
Bud followed my glance. “She was making some for the church bake sale yesterday when we got the call about that body, and then”— he shrugged helplessly—“she just didn’t stop. She wouldn’t go to church and I don’t know if she slept at all last night.”
His voice sounded far away, like I wasn’t standing right next to him, and I didn’t know if that distance was coming from him or me.
I went into the living room and stood by the fireplace, where Hattie’s and Greg’s senior class pictures both hung above the mantel in gold frames. Hattie was leaning on a tree with her arms crossed, wearing a white shirt with a flower pinned on it and a smile that barely lifted the corners of her mouth. She looked happy. No, not happy, really. Satisfied. She looked like a girl who knew what she wanted and just how to get it. She was the child who was going to succeed and make a new life away from Pine Valley and marry some hotshot lawyer and come home only for holidays with a shiny career and a kid or two to show off around town; she wasn’t the child who was going to die. I glanced at Greg’s picture, posing with Bear and a shotgun. He’d had that razor-cut hair long before he signed up for the army and was eager as hell to ship off for Afghanistan the minute he graduated. He was the one who was supposed to die. He was the child Bud and Mona had hardened their skin for, so they could take the news if it ever came.