Shutter(20)

“Is she alive?” he kept asking.

“Sir, I don’t know. I’m just taking pictures. Turn please.” His hands had several scars and bruises around his knuckles. When I had him show me his arms, he had two parallel, healing cuts right up the cuff of his sleeves, one on each arm. He turned them over, embarrassed. I pretended not to see them.

“What happened to your knuckles? That didn’t happen today?” I kept shooting pictures. I could feel him looking at me, but he never did answer. By the time I was done, they were already pulling him away to the ER.

Detective Burns’s car was pretty banged up in the back, like he had been rearended violently. The front looked pristine. On the right side, the mirror was torn off and there was red paint on the door. I pulled out some tape and framed the red flecks. It was weird that they were on that side, especially if he was rearended. How would that happen? It wouldn’t.

I must have snapped upward of one hundred photos before I made my way toward the red sedan. The coroner had been there fifteen minutes and was getting antsy, chain-smoking beside the highway. The officers had built a small box barrier around the car with white sheets; the door hung open, a female body pouring from its insides. Her torso had been crushed under the car’s weight and her legs pinned beneath the dashboard. Her arms were visibly broken. One delicate hand gripped the wheel. The body leaned to the left, resting uncomfortably against the front seat. I began to snap pictures of her, hoping there was no small child out there wondering where their mother was. I knew that someone out there loved this woman. Now her vessel was empty and silent, still buckled into reality.

I looked into the viewfinder of my camera and framed her body. The afternoon light had come in from the opposite window and created a strange halo around her head. Small trails of blood had soaked her light brown hair into a hard, thin sheath, turning it a dark and thick black. It had also created a murky and permanent seal to her eyes, glued shut by the once-vital fluid. I snapped a flutter of eight or ten photos until the sounds of fists hitting the hood pulled at my attention.

“Did you see that fucker cut me off? Okay, maybe I cut him off in town, but I didn’t mean to, you know what I mean? Well, he followed me here, racing up on me, flipping me off.” She kicked the dirt, unaware that she was no longer a physical presence. As she moved closer, she stopped to look at herself—the self belted in the car. Then she looked at me and saw me looking at her.

She immediately came toward me like a rush of hot wind, her feet not touching the ground. Her face was so close to mine that I could feel her heat and rage. I hadn’t let anyone, dead or alive, that close to me in months. I tried to pretend that I didn’t notice her, but I couldn’t help but step back. Her presence was powerful. I caught my foot on the edge of the asphalt and fell to the ground, dropping the camera into the dirt.

“Are you okay?” said a young officer. “What happened?” He extended his hand to help me off the ground.

The victim stood there looking at me, her chest heaving in panic. “You can see me, can’t you?”

I tried to pretend I didn’t hear her.

“Hey, are you okay?” the young officer asked again.

“I’m sorry. Yes. I’m fine,” I lied. “I’m just tired—punchy. I guess I didn’t see that ridge there.” By then, the investigators, the other officers and even the tow guy had begun to stare at me.

“Hope all the pictures are okay.” An officer handed me my camera. He stared at me strangely and feigned a smile. I grabbed the dusty strap and looked at the back of my camera. It still worked; I could see that the photos were there.

“They’re fine,” I stammered.

The heat rushed toward me again. She was there, in my face, trying to make eye contact. I tried my best to stare straight ahead, as if there were a full and unlimited portal to the world right at her head’s center. Her voice was loud and powerful.

“I know you can see me. I know you can. Tell them. Tell them what happened. Tell him that this guy won’t take no for an answer. We dated for, like, five months, and I broke it off a month ago. And he won’t leave me alone. He wanted me to die.” She screamed at me with such a force that I know I must have jumped, startled from what everyone else saw as silence.

I turned to see the young officer staring at me, waiting to see what I was going to do next. “Officer, I think I’ve taken enough. Thanks for your help.” I walked away from the scene, pulling up the collar on my coat. The ghost trailed right behind me.

“Did you hear what I said to you? Listen, lady, I know you can hear me. I know you can see me standing right here in front of you. Why won’t you tell them? Why won’t you tell them what I said?” She followed me all the way, forcing me to look her in the eyes. I walked through her four times before I made it to my car, where I closed the door and sat in silence. I could see her standing at my window through the corner of my eye, but I didn’t make eye contact. She bent down to stare at me and banged on my window. The coroner walked by too, following me with his eyes, a look of concern on his face.

“What do you want me to tell them?” I started the engine. “That this woman’s ghost is telling me the officer ran her off the road?”

She seemed surprised that I responded, then continued to bang at my windows. “Please tell them. I don’t care what you do, just tell them what I said. Talk to me again. Tell me you hear me.”