by K A Goodsell
I knew that, but he didn’t need to say it in that tone in front of his co-worker.
When the deputy and my father left the office, for the first time in the whole process, I let myself cry. Not soft sobs, but big, angry, ugly sobs. The kind that shake your entire body. It had stuck them inside me all day, ready to force themselves out.
I let my thoughts vomit out onto my father’s desk, listing everything that could have happened if I hadn’t left, or if I had left earlier, or if I had made sure that Elgort had gotten home safe, or if we had even gone home together. What if I had texted him to make sure he was home—would he have responded? I had no idea what would have happened, but every single possibility ran through my head like a calculation.
A knock on the door shook me, and I wiped my eyes on the back of my sleeves. I realized my whole face was wet and tried to wipe quickly with the dry areas of my sleeves and back of my hands.
“Sorry to interrupt.” Chance, an employee of both the town morgue and the morgue at my mother’s funeral home, peeked his head in from the hallway. He was only two years older than me but acted at least ten years my elder. I couldn’t tell if it was his British accent or just that he was more mature. Probably both.
His blue eyes tried not to make contact with mine when he saw that I was wiping snot from my nose. Not the most beautiful of moments in our history of interactions. I could only imagine what a sight I was right now. “Sorry, I’ll go,” he said.
“No, it’s okay.” I said, my breath slowing. “I’m the one who is sorry. What can I do for you?”
“I thought your father would be in here. I’ll just go find him,” he said. He moved to leave, but instead came into the office, shutting the door behind him. He was wearing a black-and-white striped sweater, black jeans, and a large white smock. “The body has been transported into the morgue. I just wanted to tell him that he’s ready whenever your dad is.”
“Thank you for calling him a ‘he’ and not an ‘it,’ like most other people.” I wiped my cheeks once more. I was sure they were flame-red, but at least they would be dry.
“They are barbarians when it comes to the dead, you know that,” Chance smiled, joking. But he quickly realized I wasn’t amused.
Chance had worked alongside my father for the last two years, and alongside my mother for the last four. Transport, autopsy, or even paperwork—whatever it was, he was the man. He was sweet, and I’d always found him incredibly charming. As a family friend for many years, even when we were in school together, he had seen me at probably every mood imaginable. It was like nothing could rock him, even a sobbing teenager with raging hormones. He was always cool as a cucumber, as my mother would put it. I envied him for that.
“Are you doing okay?” he asked, finally meeting my gaze.
I choked on the small remnants of tears in the back of my throat. “I’m fine.”
Chance gave me a look that said he knew it was a lie and enveloped me in a huge hug. I pushed my head against his chest. He had always been like family, I supposed, and I hadn’t realized how much I’d needed that hug.
“Thank you,” I whispered, taking in the smell of his cologne for a moment. It was nice to breathe in something other than a sterile workplace.
“I have something for you, actually.” He pulled back from my grasp. “The sheriff said you would like to look at it.”
He grabbed a baggie from his back pocket.
“Is that the book?” I asked as he handed me the object.
“We cleared it already. Swabbed it and everything. What we had to do is done. There are no fingerprints on it, except for our victim’s.” He paused for a moment, and I could feel his eyes upon my face, waiting to see if I’d react to his words. When I didn’t, he continued, “All is documented, so you’re fine to touch it. We know that you’ve done a lot of research about the town, and I guess they want you to look, see if you can figure anything out. Everyone here is at a dead end with it, honestly, since that’s not our expertise. The lab knows that you have it for your part of the investigation.”
“Oh.” I looked at the book through the plastic bag. It was coated in dried mud. I looked back up at Chance. His usually calm face was distorted, looking serious and rigid. “I’m not doing an investigation.”
“Someone told me it was extremely important that you take it.”
“Who said that?”
“The mayor, actually. Which I thought was odd, but I let it go. I figured you’d tell me why.” He forced a fake smile, followed by a real one.
“Well, I’m not even sure I’m doing my own investigation. I’m technically being investigated.” I looked back down at the book. “Last night I was at the dock.”
Chance stepped back. “Why were you at the dock? You hate water. You’re like a cat.”
“You’re questioning me, too, now?” I sighed. “I was with Elgort.”
He put his hand out in front of him. “Okay, I get the picture and don’t need any other details, please.”
“Oh, stop.” I folded my arms across my chest and instantly felt drawn to the book in my hands. “I feel awful knowing that Teddy maybe was underneath the dock when we were, and I had no idea.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better,” Chance said, smiling softly, “if he was already dead, it probably didn’t matter that you were above him trying to figure out your love life.”
I gasp. “That’s awful.” But even though the situation was horrendous, I smiled. It was true. If someone was gone, they were gone. I sometimes forget that, and my mother reminds me from time to time when we walk into the funeral home when I’m helping her. If you’re gone, you’re gone.
“I heard there’s something in there about Daniel Lockwood. That’s interesting,” he said, nodding towards the book.
“Yeah, but there’s no one in Pine Grove who’s related to him. So it’s odd that someone would write that it was in honor of their ancestor, Daniel Lockwood.”
Chance folded his arms. “Well, maybe someone is and you’re just not aware of it.”
I huffed. “I’d know.”
“You can’t know everything, Ms. Grimes.”
He was right. I couldn’t know everything, and I knew there were a thousand stories I hadn’t heard about Pine Grove residents in the ground I walked on. “Touché, my friend.”
He nodded, looking at the ground.
“What’s wrong?”
He shifted in place. “I just don’t really want you getting into this mess, and they’re kind of throwing you in the middle. You know I care about you guys, and, well, I don’t know. I just don’t want this to affect you so much. You already have to deal with the death of someone you went to school with, and now they’re trying to get you involved in the case.” He shook his head in disgust, looking at the wall. He was always even more of a protective older brother figure than my own brother was.
“I think I’ll be fine,” I told him quietly. “I just want to figure out what happened, and if I can help, then I’ll gladly do whatever it takes.”
He nodded, staring at me as if to make sure I was telling the truth and not being taken over by some kind of alien that made me fib. We stood awkwardly for a moment. “Well, do you want to head to the morgue?”
“Velma told me it was a closed morgue today.” I felt the outline of the book between my fingertips.
“Well, there’s another person who doesn’t know everything.” Chance reached for the doorknob. “You’re welcome whenever I go into the morgue. Coming?”
“I don’t know if I want to—” I paused, swallowing the saliva that had been gathering in the base of my mouth thinking about Teddy being wheeled in a body bag. The taste of acid built up in the back of my throat. “I should—”
He nodded. “I think you should, too. Get some closure, as your mother would put it.”
“Don’t bring her into this mess,” I told him.
As we approached the morgue, we looked through the window on the door to see my father unzippi
ng a body bag. It was a heartbreaking moment for me, knowing what was inside. I knew that his family would come soon to identify him, and that his girlfriend would want to see him. I wondered when she’d last seen him alive and felt a pang of hurt in my heart. I’d thought that would be me, but it wouldn’t. And yet somehow, I thought it should have been me.
One thing about my father was that he always calm. Seeing dead bodies all day every day was something that mellowed you out. You were used to it after a while. So seeing my father take a moment after he opened the bag, a hand over his mouth upset, broke my heart. He could always keep his emotions together. He was my rock and seeing him break down was all-consuming.
When my father continued his job, I entered. I felt all at once as if time had slowed down, like my feet were made of bricks, and that I was sinking in quicksand. I knew what I would see when I looked in that bag, but I still wasn’t prepared for the teenager I had known for years and years to be in there. I wasn’t prepared for someone who looked just like Elgort to be laid carefully in a body bag in front of me.
He looked over at me, Chance must have realized how uncomfortable I was. He put his hand carefully on the middle of my back, asking me if I was all right. His soothing voice didn’t even help this time. I still felt like I was going to vomit. But I told him everything was fine, even as the room sped up around me.
I walked closer to the table and the image of Elgort lying there flashed before my eyes, even though I knew for a fact it wasn’t him. I just kept seeing his face there. The guilt was consuming me. As his face came into focus, I lurched backward, and Chance caught me before I fell.
Teddy was so pale. I had seen my fair share of dead people, but this was different. This was someone I knew. Someone too young to die. Someone who’d had so much to live for. He was quiet. But many times, when I saw a dead body, there would be a loudness about them. Something that flashed, something that stood out. It was like the bodies were talking to me and telling me exactly how everything happened. If it was a body of an older person who died of natural causes, I would say that the body would tell me about their life and the lessons they’d learned. But this one was silent. Everything about it was so tragically silent.
And his hair—for someone who had been in the water and lying in the mud, his hair looked so soft now. It looked like the softest hair you would ever see.
My father looked at me, interrupting my gaze. “Are you sure you’re okay?” I didn’t answer. “Chance, could you hold on to her? Bring her outside if she’s about to pass out. Please, just watch her and make sure she’s okay. I think she’s in shock.”
Most fathers would tell their daughter to go home, but my father knew that I never would, and he knew better than to ask that of me. It would be more pain than anything. I would never agree to it.
“We won’t know how he died until we do the autopsy,” he said. His gaze went to the baggie I held. I didn’t even know I’d taken it out of my pocket until he pointed it out. “Who gave that to you?” he asked.
I looked at Chance, who told my father that his team cleared it and that there was nothing they could find on it. He assured him everything was correctly documented, and that he was instructed from the higher-ups to give it to me. My father nodded at me and warned me not to lose it. I agreed.
The mayor interrupted my thoughts bursting into the room, a severe expression on his face. A deputy was on his tail, telling him he wasn’t allowed in that room, which was correct. He would have had to get the okay from the sheriff or my father.
He took off his gloves, my father told the mayor to stop where he was, but he also signaled to the deputy that it was okay. He had it from there. When the deputy left, my father asked the mayor what he was doing in the morgue instead of waiting in his office like he was instructed to do.
“I need answers how and why he was killed. Do you know how bad this is going to be? We’re going to have newspapers all over this,” Mayor Maynard said. “I need to know why.”
“We’re not going to know why for a while,” my father said. “You need to be patient.” His statement wasn’t exactly the truth, but it wasn’t exactly a lie, either. It was very much a grey area.
The mayor mumbled to himself, saying it was a dire issue. The note that was left in the notebook was making him uncomfortable.
“What is going on?” my father asked.
“someone has called the town history into question,” the mayor told him. “There were apparently two founders, not one, buried in Pine Grove. This could be a huge issue, and some historical finances could be in jeopardy.”
“What do you mean?” my father asked.
The mayor ignored him.
“What do you know about Daniel Lockwood? Do you know anything about where he’s buried? Anything about his family?” I tell him I do not know, that there has never been any proof. I’d had no idea. All I knew was that the other Daniel was buried in Center Cemetery.
The mayor looked at me, holding my gaze. “Can—can you help with this investigation? I would compensate you for it. Mainly for the part about Daniel Lockwood.”
Before I could answer, my father asked the mayor to leave. We had work to do.
“What if I write the recommendation letter and also give you a scholarship for college? That is if you find out where Daniel Lockwood is located. We need to know. We can’t lose the funding for historical projects in this town.”
Chance held out a clipboard and asked the mayor for his signature. Maynard signed it and shoved it back annoyed at the bother.
I thought about it for a moment.
“Are you bribing my daughter?” my father asked. The mayor shrunk back, not meeting my father’s eyes.
I looked back at the body, expecting again to see Elgort looking back at me.
I wanted to know why someone would do something like this to Teddy. Why his life was taken way too soon. I knew that I could find Lockwood. I knew I was capable of it. I loved cemeteries. I knew them like the back of my hand. I winced, looking at Teddy as the thought of the recommendation letter floated to the surface of my mind. I needed that letter. Yale wouldn’t wait for me forever. The clock was ticking.
“I’ll do it,” I whispered.
I stared up at the ceiling, still wide awake despite my attempt to take a nap or at least shut out the world temporarily. I wondered about what was going to happen, and how the investigation would go. I worried that something would go wrong—and that it would be my fault.
I got out of bed and walked over to my desk. John Doe was there, and my sculpting clay. I sat, staring at the skull awkwardly and sadly, wanting to figure out the puzzle but not really having the drive to do so.
I picked up the clay, rolling it around in my hands and letting my fingers feel the shapes of the skull. The points of the cheekbones, the curve of the nose. Everything. I was trying to picture the facial structure of the person John Doe belonged to, but all I could think about was Teddy, the teen on the metal slab in the morgue, being prepped to be cut open. My father needed to do everything as soon as possible, since Teddy had spent most of the night in the water. He wasn’t in the best shape.
I sighed, sitting back in my chair, and took out the baggie. I stared at it for minutes that felt like hours. There were no fingerprints anywhere on it. In fact, it was pristine but for the dried mud. Why would anyone leave it with the body?
And why did the body look like Elgort?
There was a knock on the door, and I turned around.
“Can I come into the lair?” Nat asked, a smile on his face. I shrugged, not caring. He paused, looking around my room as if he’d never been inside. “Mom told me everything. Are you okay?” There was the awkward question I was awaiting. He just was buffering.
“We were at the grave prepping one of the gravesites for the body,” he said, looking at his hands. “As you can see, I had to take off my sweatpants. What a blow.”
“Funny,” I said dryly. “I really don’t want to hear about graves rig
ht now.” I met his gaze for the first time. “Do you even know who it was?”
Nat shrugged, but then realized it was rude. He shook his head no, correcting himself.
“His name was Teddy. You know, son of the drive-in theatre, football player Teddy?”
“I don’t,” he reminded me. “But okay. Now I feel like I do, kind of?” He was trying.
There was a long silence, and it seemed like we both held our breath for as long as we could, neither wanting exhale first. Neither of us were the best with words, and this was something we bashed heads about often.
Accepting death was something huge our parents tried hard to teach us at a young age. Having two parents who worked with the deceased and their families, we were exposed to all of it so early. Our parents wanted us to know that even if someone was gone, they wouldn’t be forgotten. They’d taught us that there was no real reason for someone leaving the world too soon except that it was their time. Sometimes that was too early, and their family would miss them, but in the grand scheme of everything, they were all going to be okay.
But that didn’t make it easier, even if our parents wished it would. It was never going to get easier the way they wanted it to, but instances like these, well, they were even worse.
Who would be able to get over a young kid leaving the earth way too soon, leaving behind their family to mourn his death for the rest of their lives? Parents should never have to bury a child, and that’s a fact.
“I-I thought it was Elgort,” I admitted eventually.
His head shot up. “Why would you think that?”
“They look so much alike. Even the same clothes. I mean, what was I supposed to think when I saw someone face down in the mud wearing the same clothes, had the same hair color, and was at the same place we were at just hours prior?”
“A lot of people have that sweatshirt, P.” He walked to the desk and gestured at the notebook still in its evidence bag. “What’s that?”
“It’s a book they found in Teddy’s pocket,” I told him. “Apparently since I study the town history, they want me to figure out what is going on with it.”
