Last to Know: A Novel(60)
“The Forester family is here, sir, they’d like to see you.”
Harry was surprised. The Foresters were a nice middle-class couple, he a bit country-club in golf shirt and loafers; she in a St. John pants suit with big clip-on gold earrings and low heels; nothing like their exotic daughter, Jemima.
He stood by the door to welcome them, shook their hands, pulled out chairs, sat opposite, looking expectantly at them.
Mrs. Forester, in the black pantsuit and a white shirt of enviable crispness, with her gold earrings in place, managed to smile at him. Harry caught a glimpse of Jemima in her smile.
Mr. Forester opened the dialogue. “We need to know exactly what’s going on,” he said, though not in a demanding tone.
“You see, we’ll never be able to sleep until we know who killed our daughter.” Mrs. Forester kept her tone low too, but Harry could see she was fighting for self-control. The woman wanted to weep, as she had probably wept ever since her daughter’s murder; you had only to look into her eyes, the same pale eyes as Jemima’s, to see how swollen they were, see the look of helplessness that meant, Harry knew from experience, that Mrs. Forester felt she had failed in her duty as a mother, failed to protect her daughter. It was obvious the father felt the same. Murder rendered families helpless, ineffectual, feeling they should have been there, done more, saved her. The Foresters were living every parent’s nightmare and wanted someone in the dock and a judge sentencing him to life, or death, for what he’d done to their child. Harry did not blame them but right now he had no answers.
“We’ve come to you for news on the investigation,” Mr. Forester said.
Harry told him they were following up on leads, mentioning, as delicately as he could, that they had “the weapon”—he refrained from saying “the knife”—and explained again about questioning Wally and Bea, which of course they already knew. What they wanted was reassurance; they wanted to know the cops were still on the job, that their daughter had not become simply another statistic, another unsolved killing.
“She’s my daughter,” Mrs. Forester reminded Harry. Unclipping the latch on her black patent leather handbag she took out a photograph and passed it over to him. “This is a good likeness. I thought you might be able to use it, you know, in the papers, on TV, see if anyone comes forward who saw her that night. I think it captures Jemima perfectly, if you see what I mean.”
She was right; Harry remembered Jemima looking exactly like that the night they’d had drinks together in Blake’s, even the black leather jacket slung around her shoulders was the same, and the mischievous grin that lit up her eyes.
“Of course, you are right,” he said. “That’s Jemima.”
“Was,” the father reminded him, sounding angry. “That was our Jemima until some bastard decided to take her from us. And what are we supposed to do now? Sit around and wait while you guys ‘pursue your investigations’? Isn’t that how you’d describe what you do, Detective?”
It was never easy dealing with the distraught family, Harry knew it never would be; he also knew that he would be doing this again with some other family, some other time. For a split second he wondered again about his work; where he was at; whether he should quit. Experiences like this took an emotional toll, especially where he had known the victim.
“Sir,” he began, though he was still searching his mind for exactly what to say, how to calm the father, comfort the mother. “I’m asking you to trust me. I am personally tracking down what happened here, I personally am determined to find out why this happened, and I promise to do everything I can to apprehend the perpetrator.”
Jemima’s dad gave a derisive snort. “Apprehend? Perpetrator? Sounds like cop-talk to me.”
“You are right. Cop shorthand you might call it, Mr. Forester, but what it means is we are on the trail of your daughter’s killer and we are determined to get the person who did it and put that person in jail and then on trial to suffer the judicial consequences.”
Forester leaned his elbows on the table, he put his head in his hands and said, “And I voted against the death penalty.”
His wife patted him gently on the back. “Don’t go there. His fate will not be in your hands. Right now it’s in Detective Jordan’s.” She looked at Harry with swollen, red-rimmed eyes. “I’m sorry we bothered you, it was really, in a way, I suppose, simply to reassure ourselves something was being done about Jemima, and to tell you that now the body has been released, her funeral will take place on Friday, at noon. Of course, there’s no need for you to attend,” she added. “I just wanted you to know that Jemima was finally being taken care of.”
Harry nodded his thanks and told them he would be there. They shook hands and he went to the door with them and watched them walk away. Was it his imagination, or did they look smaller, more stooped than when they came in? As though, he thought, they had lost their spirit along with their daughter.
*
Of course it rained Friday. Hard, slanting rain that hit viciously under umbrellas and filled the plastic sheeting in the coffin-size hole with muddy water. Harry thought it was a terrible way to say goodbye to a young woman filled with sparkle and life and the promise of a future.
He recalled finding her body, the almost execution-style killing and the fact that there was no apparent psychological motive, no logical motive. Standing at the back of the small crowd he remembered Jemima’s brave ruby lipstick, the wild red of her hair, her pearls scattered on the earth.