As the Wicked Watch(23)

Amanda Pickering, thirty-five, is a native Kentuckian who works for an investment group at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. She’s single and a prolific dater. I met Amanda in a clothing boutique when I came to Chicago to interview at News Channel 8. The zipper had busted in the dress I’d brought to wear for my interview. Thankfully, I tried it on the day before, and frantically ran out to find a replacement an hour before the boutiques closed downtown.

Amanda overheard me describe my situation to the salesperson and started helping me shop like she worked there. “When you get that job, you call and let me know,” she said in her southern drawl.

Amanda and I couldn’t be more different. She grew up in a homogeneous community outside Louisville, Kentucky. There were only two Black kids at her high school. In my experience, White people who weren’t raised around Black people can be more accepting of our differences than some who have lived around Black people their entire lives. There is, however, a learning curve, and Amanda, though well-meaning, can be a bit naive. Zena finds her off-putting, which is why I didn’t invite her today. Amanda thought she was complimenting Zena when she set her apart from Black women living in poverty on the West Side. “You live in Oak Park, for goodness sakes!” All it took was one maladroit statement by Amanda and Zena had had enough of her. I hate that it happened, but I believe in accepting people for who they are. I enjoy both women’s company, and I refuse to give one up for the other.

María Elena, thirty-five, is still my eye doctor. We bonded over red wine and complicated relationships. Her ex-husband is a Jewish attorney she met in Chicago. The marriage lasted only two years. She didn’t get along with his family and resented their assertion that she married him for a green card. “They were assholes,” she told me, “and after a while, so was he.”

I needed my girls today. Their camaraderie would be like an emollient for my worn nerves, hardened by cynicism and the stories of death that are constants in my life. I hadn’t planned on talking about work today. I must’ve been crazy to think that these smart, worldly, inquisitive women wouldn’t want to talk about the Masey James case.

Amanda kicked it off. “Isn’t it horrible about little Masey James?” she said, bringing her right hand to rest on her chest.

“Oh my God! Unimaginable,” Courtney chimed in.

“Where’d they find the body?” asked María Elena.

“At 45th and Calumet,” I said.

“Was she raped?” Amanda asked.

Oh my God, please! Just shut up! This is the last thing I want to talk about.

Courtney bolted off the couch. Her movement was so sudden that it startled me. Her face had been transformed by a painful memory. Amanda and María Elena didn’t know that Courtney had been the victim of date rape in college.

I nodded somberly and said, “Watch the news tonight.”

“You talk to Dr. Chan?” Courtney asked, not picking up on my cue to change the subject.

“Of course,” I said. “He hooked me up.”

“Really? What was the big takeaway from him?” asked Courtney, whose interest, I understood, wasn’t purely professional, but that was a big part of it.

I hesitated before I spoke. “He said whoever did this is a monster. I suppose you can say that about anybody who takes a life. But . . .”—I paused somberly—“What happened to Masey is beyond the pale. And it’s going to be very difficult to solve this case due to the condition of the remains,” I said, powering through the sentence.

“I wonder how long she’d been in that watery field,” Courtney, who had obviously watched the news, said. “Even if there was evidence of rape, the conditions could’ve changed the chemical composition of the evidence, making it useless.”

Even with my forensic background, I hadn’t thought about that. “It changes the composition of semen?” I said, suddenly becoming interested in a conversation I didn’t want to have.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw María Elena grab the tequila bottle to add a smidgen to her glass.

“Correct,” Courtney said.

“There was evidence of assault but no traces of semen,” I said. “What’s more, she was set on fire, postmortem, to destroy evidence,” I said.

María Elena froze. She clearly had lost track of how much tequila she was adding to her glass. “That poor mother,” she said.

“Whoa, hold the tequila!” I said.

“Oh shit!” she said. “What the fuck am I doing? I need some juice to put in this.”

“No, you need a bigger glass,” Courtney quipped.

Everyone laughed, releasing some of the tension of the moment.

“Girl, how do you talk to that mother?” María Elena asked.

“Mostly I listen,” I said. “I’m not sure what all she knows about what happened to her daughter. I hope to God that she was spared most, if not all, of those details.”

“Like what?” Amanda asked.

I paused for a beat. “Mmm,” I said, and rested my face in my right hand. The doctor in the house got it right away and walked over and put her arms around me.

“Sorry, sis,” she whispered in my ear. She pulled away, flashing me that striking smile of hers, and changed the subject.

“So, how’s your love life?”