Everything You Want Me to Be

by Mindy Mejia

  “Suppose we’ll have to do our police work the old-fashioned way.”

  Jake slid right into our standing argument as he gathered up the purse evidence and we got back into the cruiser.

  “Del, the old-fashioned way is antiquated. You want to know about this Gerald Jones? If the phone had worked I could’ve just looked him up in her address book and seen when she last talked to him.”

  “So you have to get a warrant for some phone records. You’re breaking my heart.”

  We argued until we got back to Pine Valley and then Jake went to pick up some Dairy Queen while I had Nancy finalize the press release. Neither one of them seemed to think about going home on a Sunday night. Usually if Jake had to work overtime, he would’ve started complaining by now, but I didn’t hear a word out of him. Nothing about some date with legs up to there or the beers he was missing with his buddies. There was a silent understanding that we were all in this case together, to whatever end.

  I talked to the field teams while we ate. Shel hadn’t turned anything else up in the lake and the dogs were coming up empty. If we couldn’t find the murder weapon, our hard evidence depended completely on the autopsy results and the forensics report on the items they’d found in the lagoon. We needed some prints or some DNA, badly.

  “Man, you won’t believe this stuff, Del. Listen to what I found.”

  Jake brought his laptop into my office and started reading aloud. Nancy hovered at the door.

  “The curse is one of the most widely held superstitions in theater, dating back centuries. It’s rumored that Shakespeare wrote actual witches’ spells into his play, which angered the real witches living during that time. Every performance of Macbeth, or ‘The Scottish Play’ as generations of frightened actors refer to it, is considered dangerous and ripe for accidents and foul play.”

  “What curse?” Nancy asked.

  “What are you looking up that shit for?” I balled up my sandwich wrapper and threw it away.

  “You’re the one who asked Tommy about it.”

  “Then you weren’t listening too well.” I left the two of them and found some leftover coffee in the pot, smelled it, and put the whole thing in the microwave. By the time I’d gotten back it seemed like Jake had filled Nancy in. I glared at her big, frightened eyes.

  “I didn’t ask Tommy about the curse. I asked a murder suspect if he wanted to deflect some suspicion somewhere else. And he didn’t.”

  “So what does that tell us?”

  “Either he killed her and he didn’t know about the curse, or he didn’t kill her and someone else did. Someone who isn’t some goddamn ghost story.”

  “Witch’s spell,” Nancy corrected.

  “Witches’ spells, my ass.” The microwave beeped and I went out and poured the sludge into a cup.

  “Listen to this,” Jake said when I came back again.

  “Laurence Olivier nearly died several times while he was performing Macbeth. Three people died in a London performance in 1942. In Manchester in 1947, the actor playing Macbeth said he didn’t believe in the curse. He was stabbed during a swordfight in rehearsal and died.”

  “So some guy didn’t like him and thought it was a good opportunity to off him.”

  Jake wasn’t paying attention to me. “When Charlton Heston played Macbeth, he was severely burned.”

  “That’s what happens when you stand too close to a fire.”

  They were both sucked into it now. Nancy read over his shoulder as Jake clicked through web page after web page.

  “The legend is that Lady Macbeth died in the very first production back in 1606 for King James. The actor collapsed and died backstage. No one knew why.”

  I shook my head over the coffee, draining the cup. “You two are acting like that girl, Portia.”

  “It’s a lot of stuff to happen around one play, and now Hattie, too. Makes you wonder.”

  “Makes you wonder, maybe. Makes me think I need another deputy on this case.”

  “Come on, Del.”

  Grabbing my coat, I left them both with their heads full of nonsense and headed back over to Bud’s place. I needed to dig into Hattie’s life more, see where she was spending her time, and I also wanted to see Bud and Mona. Make sure they had pulled themselves off the floor.

  Curses. Jesus. It took all kinds. There wasn’t anything to a curse but words. Just like blessings and prayers and all the rest of it. People used words to try to change what they should be changing with their own two hands. And if the problem was too big to fix, no words called up into the air would make a lick of difference. I drove past the turnoff to Bud’s and kept going for a ways, just to let the land settle into me and put everything back in perspective.

  They called Montana big sky country and that’s what it was here, too. This land was all soft hills of corn and soybeans rolling out into the clouds in every direction. Farmhouses hid in clumps of trees here or there, but there wasn’t anything to break up the horizon. The sky ruled, whether it was the sun baking the crops or the wind whipping dust devils across the roads. Some mornings the sky wouldn’t even let you see the land; it’d lay a fog so thick you couldn’t make out the car ahead of you. Everything came from the sky and it put you in your place, made you feel how small you were. For years after Nam, I parked out next to the highway and watched those big old thunderheads roll in. It was like a balm, seeing how they made everything under them dark and cowering, like seeing a piece of my soul laid out. That’s why we had such good church people here. In the city the sky was all covered up by buildings and bridges and everything else. People forgot how little they were. They forgot they weren’t in charge. Out here it was plain as day. You just looked out in front of you and saw God. Now, I didn’t take to those ministers who said God listened to each and every one of us and intervened in our daily lives like some meddling boss. I used to believe it as a kid, I guess, but I’d seen too much to put any stock in it now. Look at Hattie. Who could see that mutilated, bloated body and tell me it was God’s will? No, God had nothing to do with that. He had bigger things to worry about than how we managed to muck up our lives and deaths.

  Just as I was turning back toward Bud’s I got a call from the morgue.

  “Sheriff Goodman,” a voice said. Fran didn’t say hi like everybody else. Made you feel like you were being allowed to talk to her, even when she was the one calling you.

  “What do you have?”

  “No foreign fibers or hairs anywhere on her. No sign of a struggle either.”

  “So she didn’t see it coming?”

  “I would say the blow to the chest came first and she either didn’t have the time or the inclination to fight before it was delivered. The slashes to the face were postmortem.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “No struggle. The trauma to the face wasn’t deep enough to cause her to lose consciousness, so it would have elicited a defensive response.”

  “So it was quick.”

  “As quick as any of us can die.”

  Well, that was something. At least I could tell Bud that. “Anything else?”

  “Yes. There were traces of semen on her underwear.”

  “Jesus Christ.” I swung over to the side of the highway and hit the brakes. A few cars swerved around me, slowing down like I might ticket them for speeding. I rubbed my forehead, thinking it through.

  “Someone raped her before killing her?”

  “It doesn’t appear to be rape. I noted some mild abrasion. Nothing more serious.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It was aggressive, but probably consensual sex.”

  “And the semen survived the water?” I asked.

  “Only her legs appeared to be submerged. Her torso was dry, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to observe any sexual activity.”

  “Can you tell when it happened?”

  “It could have been anytime within a few hours of death, based on the abrasion.”

  Had to ha
ve been after the play, then. Either Tommy wasn’t telling all about parking with her at the beach or she’d gone off to meet a lover, an aggressive lover, who might have done her in.

  “Well, we’ve got some DNA now.”

  “That you do.”

  “Good. I’ve got at least one suspect to test against.”

  “The Hennepin County crime lab can do the comparison. It could take weeks, depending on their wait list. Have him come in to Mayo to submit the specimen.”

  “He’ll be there in the morning.” I’d make sure of that.

  After I hung up with Fran, I stared at the sky for a minute, took a deep breath, and then continued out to Bud’s.

  There were trucks and cars littered all over the driveway, family pouring in to help out any little way they could. The minister was there and all the church ladies. I found Bud out in the barn with some of the men. They were talking about helping him get his corn in this year, and weren’t taking no for an answer. I nodded at each one as they filed out, leaving Bud sitting on the arm of a combine, staring at the floor. I didn’t ask him how he was doing. I didn’t push my sympathies on him like another load I expected him to carry. There wasn’t anything I could do except take him inside and sit him and Mona down in their bedroom away from all the hens and tell them matter-of-factly everything Fran had said. That Hattie didn’t feel a thing. It was as quick as falling down. That she wouldn’t have had two seconds to be scared.

  Then I told them about the sex.

  “What?” Bud shot up, looking like he wanted to take a swing at me. I hadn’t even mentioned the aggressive part.

  “God damn that Kinakis kid. God damn him.” Bud wasn’t in any mood to think beyond that, so I turned to Mona.

  “Was she seeing anybody besides Tommy Kinakis?”

  She shook her head once, a tight denial. “She’d been seeing him since before the holidays.”

  While Bud stormed around the room, probably planning Tommy’s death, I sat on the bed next to Mona. She was working her hands one over the other, staring hollowly at the remains of the table she’d fallen into that morning.

  “Did you know she was having sex, Mona?”

  Bud swung around, all ears now.

  “No.” Steady tears leaked into the crows feet around her eyes. She didn’t bother to wipe them away. “No, I didn’t know that. I thought there was something she wasn’t telling me, but I didn’t think it was to do with sex. Hattie was never starry-eyed about a boy in her whole life. Honestly, I never thought she liked Tommy that much. I couldn’t pin down exactly why she was dating him.”

  “That kid’s got some answering to do.”

  “Hold on there, Bud. We’re going to talk to Tommy again in the morning, and have him submit a DNA sample to test against what we found on Hattie.”

  “You’re sure it wasn’t rape?” Mona whispered.

  “It wasn’t rape. The medical examiner was positive. Don’t be thinking that, either one of you.”

  Neither of them seemed able to speak anymore.

  “I’m going to need to look through Hattie’s room. If you remember anyone else she was close to or in contact with, call me right away. Doesn’t matter what time.”

  Mona resumed crying in earnest now and Bud went over to her. I left them alone and went to Hattie’s bedroom upstairs, without a word to the hens hovering by the kitchen doorway.

  I was surprised there wasn’t much to see. A twin bed, dresser, and desk. She didn’t have posters splashed all over like most teenagers, just one picture—framed—of the New York City skyline above her bed. Her closet was about as messy as you’d expect but it was all clothes and purses holding lip gloss, bobby pins, movie ticket stubs, and loose change. Nothing that helped. Her desk seemed about the most personal thing in the room. The drawers were full of magazine pictures of subway stations, neon signs, and women walking down city sidewalks with little rat dogs tucked in their purses. I couldn’t find a diary or a journal, which struck me as odd. Hattie’d seemed like the type to keep one. Her laptop had a lot of stuff on it though and maybe we’d find something there. Jake could dig into those files with his computer tricks.

  In the bottom drawer I found a program for a Rochester play where Hattie had gotten the lead. I remembered Bud saying something about that last fall. Scratching his neck, shrugging his shoulders as we winterized his boat. Kid’s a natural. Damned if I know where she got it.

  Flipping through the program, my eye caught on a particular name.

  Gerald Jones, director.

  Now, why would Hattie be carrying, on the night of her death, the card and phone number of a man she hadn’t seen in over six months? A man she was connected to through the theater?

  I smiled grimly, ready to put Jake in his place when I got back to the station. Look what old-fashioned police work turned up.

  PETER / Saturday, September 8, 2007

  SHAKESPEARE WAS one cunning SOB. I didn’t care much for his comedies, the farces full of village idiots and misplaced identities. I’d always gravitated to the tragedies, where even witches and ghosts couldn’t distract the audience from this central psychological truth: by our own natures, we are all inherently doomed. Shakespeare didn’t write anything new. He didn’t invent jealousy, infidelity, or the greed of kings. He recognized evil as timeless and shone a spotlight directly, unflinchingly on it and said, This is what we are and always will be.

  Of course, right at this minute, I had no idea what my wife was.

  “So Peter just found out he’ll be directing the spring play at school,” Mary said conversationally as she sliced through the tender breast meat of a chicken. She smiled at me, encouraging me to jump into the conversation, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything besides the chicken. It had been alive a few hours ago and now wafts of rosemary and cooked skin rolled off it, turning my stomach as Elsa and our neighbor Winifred lifted their plates for the entrée.

  “Do The Music Man. I like the songs in that one,” Winifred ordered. She often joined us for Saturday-night dinners and usually I looked forward to the bang of the screen door that announced her arrival. She was wiry and opinionated and had all the strength of heart that Elsa lacked.

  I shook my head weakly. “The principal said it had to be Shakespeare.”

  He’d told me he didn’t care which play, except it couldn’t be Romeo and Juliet. Nothing suicide-related, he said.

  Elsa smiled fondly as she scooped up some peas. “Lyle always likes his Shakespeare.”

  “Remember when he had them do A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Will Davis’s bean fields?” Winifred scoffed. She glanced over and filled me in on the joke.

  “All the chairs were set up on what they found out was a giant anthill, and before the first act was over, the whole audience was covered in biting ants.”

  Elsa put a quavering hand on Winifred’s, changing the topic back to how she didn’t like Winifred living alone anymore. Having Mary and me around helped her see how much better it was to have support, she said. Winifred dismissed her friend’s concerns with a practiced flair and steered the conversation to the new furnace that was being installed in the town café.

  Everyone enjoyed Saturday-night dinners with Winifred. The conversation was more animated. Elsa perked up and her complexion looked healthier, which made Mary relax. Once, we played cards afterwards and Winifred even had a beer with me, but it became obvious that Elsa didn’t have the capacity to play hearts anymore, so the game ended and the TV was switched on before she could become too flustered.

  I was always the third wheel at these dinner parties, trying to find my way into conversations that debated the merits of different furnace brands or analyzed the year’s weather predictions from the Farmers’ Almanac. All my references to literature or pop culture fell flat, despite Mary’s or my attempts to explain the context. They didn’t intentionally ostracize me, but I was outside all the same. Tonight, though, I couldn’t even try to engage. My attention was torn between the chicken in the c
enter of the table and Mary’s profile as she refereed the conversation.

  “That doesn’t look very good.” Winifred leaned over my plate and poked at my veggie burger.

  “Try it if you want.” I got up and grabbed a Coke from the fridge.

  “They’re actually pretty tasty,” Mary put in. “Especially grilled and with some cheese and tomato on top. They make great lunches.”

  “No, thanks, Winifred replied. “I only eat food I recognize.”

  Then she and Elsa launched a discussion of the quality of various TV dinners. I took a long drink.

  After dinner Mary and I tackled the cleanup. She washed the dishes and tossed comments into the older ladies’ discussion via the pass-through window between the kitchen and living room, just like everything was normal. Her hands were scalded red from the hot water. I couldn’t stop staring at them. She laughed at something, then caught my expression and sobered as she handed me a plate to dry.

  As soon as the kitchen was in order I excused myself and went upstairs. I’d been spending more and more time in the spare room, which was obvious from the piles of books and stacks of student papers covering the tops of the dusty storage boxes. The heat from the oven had drifted up, stifling the air in the tiny space. Opening a window that screamed against its sash, I began picking up books at random. Lifting one, I traced the gilt in the cover, then grabbed another and checked a copyright date I already knew. I flipped to arbitrary pages and read a few lines, then turned to the next book and the next. I couldn’t settle into any of them, couldn’t make myself forget what happened today.

  The worst part was that it had been my idea in the first place.

  Show me what to do with the chickens and I’ll take some shifts with them. Give you a breather, I’d offered the other day. It was a desperate move on my part. I could think of a thousand things I’d rather do to reclaim my marriage besides clean up chicken shit, but all my efforts with Elsa were failing. Whether it came from pride or shame, she allowed only Mary to help her with most tasks, and whenever I asked her how she felt the answer was the same. “Fine, fine.” So chicken shit it was. Although she raised her eyebrows when I made the suggestion, Mary agreed.