Apartment 508 was two suites from the end of the corridor. I rapped on the door. “Hello? Miss Martins?” I called out. No response. I tried the knob; it was open.
The dayroom had a series of broad windows hung with sun-filtering sheers. The furnishings were modern and spare, the upholstery all pastel colors. Just inside the door, a chrome-countered efficiency kitchen gleamed. To its left, a glass-topped breakfast table held two china mugs, one of which was overturned. The light brown liquid it had contained now spread across the glass and dripped on the parquet floor, causing faint splattering noises. There were also two metal chairs: one pulled out at an angle and the other overturned, its back on the floor. Nothing seemed to belong to Miss M.
“Hello?” Philippa said. “Anyone home?”
Silence.
I ventured in, pausing at the overturned chair. I leaned toward the table and sniffed the liquid. Sweet and a touch bitter. Maybe cocoa or Ovaltine? I scanned the kitchenette, selected a large butcher knife from the drying rack, and grasped it tightly in front of me. I checked in with Philippa. She gave me wide, frightened eyes.
We moved into the next room, the bedroom. Ceiling-to-floor forest green curtains had been drawn over the windows, emitting only slivers of bright sunlight. The two dim bedside lamps failed to chase the shadows from the room’s nooks and corners. Someone had torn the coverlet from the bed, balled it up, and tossed it carelessly to the side with the pillows. Only the bottom sheet remained—a stark eyesore in the middle of the room. On a lacquered vanity trimmed with green ruffles, Miss M’s jewelry chest spilled a strand of pearls and tangle of necklaces. Philippa inspected it, holding up the knot of chains, before returning them to the box.
“What’s going on?” she said, looking at me, her face bunched with worry. “Something isn’t right. Shouldn’t we go?” My heart was pounding. Without answering her, I continued to search, the knife trembling in front of me, cutting little circles in the air.
I noticed wet spots on the carpet near the bathroom. I stepped through its threshold. A small, high window beamed light into the mirror above the sink, giving the rose petal pink room a cloying glow. A thin glaze of water coated the floor, and the frilly shower curtain for the inset tub was cinched back and damp along its bottom edge. Faint lilac perfume swirled in the air.
Someone had draped a white bedsheet over the tub, and water had soaked through it, revealing the contours of a face and shoulders underneath. Poking out from the shroud, two fingers were frozen in a strange, beckoning articulation. Above the body, in contrast to the wall color, written crudely with lipstick was AHKA.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. Philippa muttered something, but it was garbled, broken. I wanted to reply, to gasp, to scream, but nothing came. Something shifted in me, and I began sinking into the floor, its checkered tiles quicksand. I needed help; I needed a lifeline before my head went under. I felt a tug on my sleeve and flinched violently. “Fuck! Don’t touch me!” I snapped, lowering my knife, which I was still holding in front of me like a sword.
As if guiding my actions from outside myself, like being my own puppeteer, I approached the body. I picked up a corner of the sopping sheet and peeled it back. Beneath it, Miss M was fully dressed and crammed in the tub like a doll in a toy crib. Her elbows were wedged at her sides, forcing her forearms out at unnatural angles. Her right hand seemed to be frozen midgesture as if she’d been summoning a taxi or a waiter when she was struck down. Her smooth skin, although still flushed, was marred by dissolving makeup, eye shadow, and liner. Her blond curls fell across her forehead in loose, damp strands. Her warm gray eyes, eyes that had smiled at me and read my heart many times, glowed dimly through filmy white slits. Her mouth gaped like drowned Ophelia, emptied of its poetry. Around her neck, the killer had twisted a dark green tie flecked with little scarlet shamrocks. Between the silk flaps at its back, sewn into the tip lining, the image of a swimsuit-clad pin-up girl peeped out. Her sexy smirk, a sick taunt.
I touched her forearm, hoping that, like Prince Charming, I could reverse this terrible spell. She seemed so vacant I expected her skin to be icy, but it was warm. I recoiled. The contents of my stomach slid into my throat, but no vomit came up, just scorching acid.
“She’s dead?” Philippa asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“What do we do?”
“I don’t… I don’t know.”
“This is, is… Oh Jesus.”
“Yes, it is.” I glanced at Philippa and saw Miss M’s empty face transposed on hers. I gasped, felt my stomach churn, and looked away.
Philippa took my hand. “Should we go?” she said, pulling me back from Miss M’s body.
“Yes, yes,” I said. “Right now.”
PHILIPPA, NOVEMBER 13, 1948
Before Judy removed the sheet, I willed Miss Martins’s body to be unreal, a prop in our little drama. I was sure she would look like a marble figure in repose—or an ethereal corpse from a Hollywood movie, draped just so for aesthetic appeal.
Of course, I was horribly wrong.
It was absurd, like walking into your living room one day and finding a gorilla or an army tank. How did it get there? Who brought it? What terrible force was behind it? It couldn’t be reckoned with. It refused to be understood.
As I’m writing this, I still can’t picture her. It’s a blank in my mind’s eye.
When I took Judy’s hand and moved her away from the body, sorrow began rolling toward me like an enormous wave. Before it crashed over me, we launched into action, racing out of the bathroom, through the gloomy bedroom, past the overturned chair and spilled hot chocolate, over the loops and flourishes of the hall carpet, and into the elevator, which took centuries to descend, the floors ticking off like the countdown to an atomic blast. We squeaked across the lobby, past the unattended front desk, and out into the sun. Judy grabbed Rosie and held him close, despite his whimpers. We crossed 16th Street, ran down the hill to U Street, and scrambled onboard the next streetcar.
After we plopped into our seats, I had the sudden urge to smash something, something that would shatter in thousands of pieces. I wanted to break the calm of the streetcar ride, the hum of its motor, the clank of its wheels, the murmur of the other riders. Most of all, I wanted Judy to stop smothering poor Rosie, to look at me, and say something. Anything.
But none of that happened. Instead, I leaned against the streetcar window and thought of Aunt Sophie—just a flash of her kind face—and burst into tears.
JUDY, NOVEMBER 13, 1948
As the streetcar trembled down Florida Avenue, I clawed my way out of my dark hole, a shadowy place in my memory filled with yawling cats and musty cellars and now Miss M. As I surfaced, I imagined her below me, standing in a dank corner, her neck contorted, her jaw slack, and her eyes barely open, just the whites showing. I wanted to stay with her, reassure her, but I couldn’t. Rosie was squirming in my lap, licking my fingers. Philippa was sniffling beside me, needing me. I reached out and took her hand and squeezed it, and let it go. She looked at me, wiping the tears off her cheeks. We were silent. What was there to say? Within twenty-four hours, I’d lost Miss M twice: first as my mother and then all together. At least Philippa wasn’t trying to console me.
She exhaled and said, “I can’t believe it. I just—”
“Believe it.”
“Was it Halo?”
“Who else?”
“Are you sure? He would’ve had to act fast. He only had about ten minutes on us.”
“Her killer was someone she knew,” I said, failing to disguise my impatience. “The door to the apartment was unlocked, but not damaged. It was him.”
“I know, but still, he would’ve had to strangle her, drag her into the bathroom, fill up the bathtub, turn off the water, write AHKA on the wall, and leave before we got there. Oh, and why strip the bed? Just for the sheet?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, not in the right frame of mind to play detective.
; But she kept on: “And why write that? Bogdan is still locked up. Right? Why try to frame a man who couldn’t possibly have done it?”
“Philippa,” I groaned, but she had a good point. Of course, there’s no accounting for psychos. “It’s not about framing him. He’s just fucking crazy.”
“If he’s so crazy, why did he go through the trouble of framing Bogdan with the yearbook?” she said, undaunted. “Why frame him then unframe him? It doesn’t make sense.”
I was trying to listen to her and not lash out. I wanted to knock each of the points down, just to shut her up, but I couldn’t focus. Blood was pounding in my brain. I knew Halo was responsible. My gut wasn’t wrong. Perhaps Miss M had known something, perhaps she could’ve implicated him in Cleve’s murder. “Jesus, you saw him raping her,” I said. “You saw it!”
Rosie snorted, and a woman across the aisle flashed us a stern look. I rubbed Rosie’s head, letting his soft ears slip through my fingers. Maybe Philippa was right, I thought. Maybe it wasn’t cut and dried. Then, like that, I remembered something: “The tie around her neck,” I said, “it was the same one Halo was wearing when we first met him. Green with little red shamrocks.”
“You’re right,” Philippa said. “But—” and she stopped herself and glanced out the window at the townhouses and storefronts drifting past us and didn’t say anything else.
When we reached our stop, we stepped out of the streetcar and into the chilly dusk. I set Rosie down and let him piss on a nearby tree. “I want to catch him before he does the same thing to us,” I said. “I want him to pay.”
Philippa nodded, her eyes avoiding mine.
“Don’t tell your parents what we saw. We need time to make a plan.” I touched her shoulder lightly, a little skittish of her. “Be careful. Okay?”
She looked at me, and I took in her blue-gray eyes, wisps of her mussed hair floating in the breeze. For a moment, something about her—perhaps that mix of gentleness and tenacity, a hint of her implacable core underneath—reminded me of Miss M, the thought of which suddenly became unbearable. “He was wearing blue today,” she said, stepping away from me. “He didn’t have on that stupid tie. Why not use the one he was wearing to… to strangle her? Especially if it was on the spur of the moment?”
I didn’t have a good answer. I didn’t have an answer at all.
PHILIPPA, NOVEMBER 14, 1948
When Dad, Bonnie, and I returned from church today, Quincy was sitting on our stoop, flipping through the morning paper. He stood when he saw us, folded the pages over, and said, “I’m sorry to surprise you.” Inside, he eased into telling us what I already knew. As he spoke, a new wrinkle bunched on his forehead, and his dimples, prickly with stubble, disappeared and twitched into life again whenever he edged toward a difficult bit of the story. This boyishness made me want to reassure him, to tell him that I had seen her, that it was so much worse than anything he could say to me now. When he finally came to the point—“Your teacher, Christine Martins, has been murdered”—I forgot to react. Bonnie and Dad stared at me for several seconds before I took my cue, forced out a melodramatic sob, and fled upstairs.
In my room, I took a deep breath, but before I could collect myself, there was a knock on the door. Quincy peeked in. “You okay, Phil?”
“No,” I said and dropped on my bed in a spineless flop, sinking my face into my pillow. I’m an atrocious actor, so I didn’t want him to see that I wasn’t crying. The horror of seeing Miss Martins refused to settle in. It was still too foreign, too impossible.
He sat beside me. For a minute, he didn’t say anything, then he spoke. “Phil, you’ve got to tell your dad that you’ve been snooping around. Whoever killed Cleve and Jackie also killed Christine Martins. It isn’t Bogdan, at least not Bogdan alone. You could be in danger.”
I surfaced from my pillow and debated blurting it all out. I wanted to tell him that we’d seen Halo enter the Daphne Arms, we’d seen Miss Martins’s body, we’d seen AHKA written in bloodred lipstick. I wanted to tell him about the connection between Halo and Miss Martins. I wanted to explain Judy’s theory about the yearbook. The clues darted through me like flecks of goldfish in a murky pond, refusing to coalesce. No, I couldn’t tell Quincy. Not yet. Besides, the clues belonged to us. We should be the ones to act on them.
“I’ll tell Dad,” I lied. “I promise.”
“We’ll figure things out.” He put his arm around me, and I leaned into him. “I’m sure of it.” The faint musk of his cologne made me wince and think about Halo, about his mean good looks, about his body flung over Miss Martins on her bed. Maybe he was a killer, maybe he wasn’t, but I know what I saw: He violated her, and he had to pay for it.
* * *
Judy met me at the door and gestured frantically for me to come in. “The police are going to release Bogdan,” she whispered. “B and E are in the kitchen. It’s not pretty. They’ve been on the phone all morning, but it’s not doing any good.”
I slid out of my coat and draped it over my arm. Cigarette smoke hung in the air, which was odd. Edith usually forbade smoking. A cluster of fresh calla lilies had been arranged on either side of Jackie’s photo. Judy closed the door, held a finger to her lips, and pointed toward the stairs.
Before we could cross the foyer, Edith was marching down the hall and calling out, “Who’s there? Who is it?” Wedged between her fingers, a butt smoldered, trailing a ribbon of smoke. When she spotted me, she groaned, “Philippa, are you ever at home? Your parents must wonder where you are? How do you pacify their curiosity?” She squinted at me. “Do tell me.” She’d pinned up her hair sloppily, and her face was stretched tight and raw as if she’d scrubbed it with a rough sponge. Her dark purple dress was bunched at the waist and crooked on her shoulders. Bogdan’s release was taking its toll. I might’ve been sympathetic had I not been under attack. With a little edge, I said, “They trust me, I guess.”
“Aren’t they fools!” she squawked.
I looked to Judy, who took a half-step forward, and her eyes narrowed, taking aim. “Stop it,” she snapped at Edith, drawing back her shoulders, which caused her loose sweater to slip down her arms and expose her clavicle, a bright ridge of olive skin. Dark energy coiled between them, ready to spring. I wanted to leave. But I couldn’t back down now, especially in front of Judy.
Edith seemed briefly unsettled, then scoffed. “Go home. Now is not the time.”
“Don’t tell her what to do,” Judy said, making a fist, cocking her right arm, and thrusting her chest out. Her small breasts rose in distinct ridges under her cream-colored camisole, her skin seemed to deepen a shade darker, and her bangs fell over her forehead like spider legs. She was beautiful in a weary and ferocious way. Despite the distance between us, I swooned with admiration. Sure, I still wanted her to apologize for rejecting my kiss, but I don’t think she’s going to. Doing so, would make it real—us real. It stings, but it doesn’t change how I feel about her, how I adore her.
“Philippa, dear,” Edith said with a condescending air. “You must have some sense of what we’re going through. It’s not a good time for you to be here.” She began to turn away.
“I want her here,” Judy said, tightening her fist.
Edith swiveled back. “I’ll ring her father if she doesn’t go.”
“No, you won’t,” Judy flung at her. “It’s an empty threat.”
Edith chewed on this, then spat back: “We made such a mistake with you.” She planted her hands on her hips. “We doted when we should’ve disciplined. We tried to mold you into something better than you were. We gave you everything. I should’ve known: Disposition is in the blood. Biology is fate. If you came from nothing, you were bound to be nothing. I’m shooing Philippa away because it’s better for her. Why should she suffer, too?”
“I don’t feel that way,” I said, horrified.
“Then you’re a fool,” Edith said with surprising earnestness. Edith was scared of Judy—or at least afraid that she couldn’t contro
l her. I considered their confrontation over Bogdan at the Halloween party. Edith and Judy were in a constant tug of war over the past. In Edith’s version, Judy was a willful and ungrateful student, unable to be tutored in the ways of becoming her daughter in the mold of erstwhile Jackie. In Judy’s version, Edith offered her comfort and wealth, sure, but not freedom. She was Edith’s plaything, a Jackie doll.
During Edith’s tirade, she had come gradually to life like Pygmalion’s Galatea, alabaster becoming flesh, flecks of jet becoming pupils, shards of ivory becoming teeth. Her joints seemed to creak and activate. Her face and neck muscles flexed. Heat rose through her, and perspiration formed on the ridge of her nose and her upper lip. She gave off a familiar spicy odor. She took another step, but instead of boiling over with rage—which I was bracing for—she just blinked.
“Please—” I said, but she shot me a look, and I stammered.
“She’s right,” Judy said. “You should go.”
Edith seemed puzzled.
I shook my head; I wasn’t going to budge.
“Okay,” she said and strode past Edith to Jackie’s photo. From between the sprays of calla lilies, she snatched it up, the little girl’s inscrutable expression flashing briefly, and brought it down on the corner of the table. Glass shattered, and with it, the full magnitude of her rage broke through. She gritted her teeth, and the sinewy contours of her forearms bulged. She slammed the fancy frame into the wood again, scoring the table and ripping the photo. Its leather back popped off and hit the floor with a clunk. She held it up again, perhaps to take a swipe at the lilies, but Edith grabbed her arm and wrenched it hard. Judy cried out and dropped the mangled frame.
Casting her extinguished butt aside, Edith kneeled to pick up the torn and crumpled photo. She held it as if it were little Jackie herself. “How could you?” she murmured as she stood. “It’s the only one I have. I’ll never be able to replace it.” Tears were streaming down her cheeks. “How could you be so, so vicious? How could you?”
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