Locust Lane(31)

“Can I ask you something?”

He paused long enough to indicate his reluctance.

“Sure.”

“How long was she lying there before you guys found her?”

“I can’t really discuss that.”

“You saw her, though. At the Bondurant place.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I saw her.”

“I mean, was she naked?”

“She was clothed,” he said, with great reluctance.

“Did she look, I don’t know, peaceful? Did she look like she’d suffered?”

“I can’t really … maybe the docs can help you with that one.”

That was when she decided she was done with Procopio. If the guy couldn’t even summon the decency to utter a comforting little lie, then to hell with him. Any further interactions would be with Gates, who at least knew how to pretend she gave a damn.

The address he gave her was in Boston. Another building, another parking lot, more strangers. They were expecting her. A young, bearded doctor and a Hispanic woman, a social worker. Too late for either of you, Danielle thought. They walked down a few corridors and stopped outside a door with a red bulb burning above the frame.

“There’s some damage, primarily to her eye,” the bearded doctor said. “You should prepare yourself.”

“How do you do that?” Danielle said.

“Excuse me?”

“Prepare yourself?”

The doc looked at the social worker, who for some reason was nodding, like the question had already been answered. The doctor knocked. A young man in scrubs opened the door. Everybody went inside. She’d expected something like you saw on TV, a basement warehouse with track lights and bodies in big drawers. Faucets and sinks. The whine of a power saw. But it was just a bare room with a gurney in the middle of it. They did do the unveiling thing, pulling back a thin green sheet that covered Eden’s body. The movies got that much right. Her eyes were half open; there was some caked blood clumped in her hair above her left ear. If it hadn’t been for the eye, its white turned a sickening violet, as if someone had daubed it with paint, she’d have looked like Eden, asleep.

“How’d she die?”

“Cerebral hemorrhage,” the doctor said.

“From being hit?”

“Striking her head after being forcefully shoved, it seems.”

“And that’s why her eye…”

“Correct. Yes.”

“Was she raped?”

“We haven’t really made a final determination on that yet.”

“Come on.”

“There appears to have been some sexual contact. You’ll have to talk to the detectives about the nature of it.”

Everybody waited. Danielle had thought she’d find it impossible to leave her daughter once she was with her, but after just a few seconds she couldn’t wait to flee. She didn’t want to touch her or smell her or whisper private words into her ear. This wasn’t Eden. This was just a dead body where her girl used to live. If she wanted to see Eden, she’d have to look elsewhere.

“So what happens now?”

“You’ll be needing to arrange a funeral director,” the woman said. “We can help you with that.”

“But we won’t be releasing the body for a few days,” the doctor said.

“Why’s that?”

“Autopsy.”

“Don’t I have to agree to that?”

“It’s automatic in cases like these.”

Cases like these. Danielle turned and left the room. She kept walking until the front doors whooshed open for her. She had an overwhelming desire to do something, but she had no idea what that might be. No way was she going back home. Not yet. And the cops didn’t want her hanging around. They’d made that clear enough.

That’s when Bill Bondurant called. He sounded a lot older than he had the last time they spoke. It turned out they’d been in Albany visiting friends for a few days. They’d just finished with the police and were now at somebody’s house in Emerson.

“I don’t know what could have happened,” he said.

“Can I come talk to you?”

He gave her the address. And so it was back to Emerson, this time in her own car. As she drove, she thought back to her first visit. It had been like crossing the ocean to an unknown continent. She didn’t relish the idea of spending time with country-club types, even if they were cousins three times removed, or third cousins, or whatever they were. To her surprise, she’d found the Bondurants to be genuinely good people. They were older than she remembered from their first meeting at the funeral, just on the edge of being old. But there was a strength there. Not just money strength, but a sort of unshakable decency. Betsy so warm and welcoming, speaking to her as if the few drops of blood they shared were a mighty ancestral river. Bill was more reserved, but that was just his way. He was older than his wife by a good ten years. A gentleman, courtly and polite. At one point he said something that explained the whole strange undertaking.

“Betsy always needs someone to be looking after. With the kids long gone, well…”

As for Eden herself, she sat contentedly with her big glass of sweetened iced tea, her traveling circus of nervous tics closed down, at least for the time being. And she really hit it off with the dog. Yes, the Bondurants sure loved Eden. But that was just the way she was. People who hardly knew her were drawn to her. It was the ones who were already close to her that she could drive around the bend.