Afterlife

by Douglas Clegg

  “This is Homicide Detective McGuane, from Manhattan,” the sheriff said too formally.

  Julie didn’t glance up at any of them. People make mistakes all the time. Errors in judgment. This is why they need someone to identify bodies. Human error is the norm in life. Of course that’s true. Of course.

  “Mrs. Hutchinson, I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes. Perhaps not right now. Not today. But soon. The sooner the better,” the stranger said.

  She couldn’t look up at his face.

  She kept watching the dead man. She was aware of the wounds and knew that whoever had killed the man on the table had a knowledge of where to strike—there were knife entry wounds at the arm, the lungs, the neck, and the heart. Lacerations on the shoulders and hands, where there might’ve been a struggle. She had worked in the city, and had seen murder victims before, years ago, when she had been a newly minted RN, and had often worked the graveyard shift in the ER. She’d seen the victims of gang killings then, of domestic homicide, of any number of ways that a human being could be killed.

  She had been able, quickly, to separate herself from the dead, even in her mid-twenties, by viewing them as having gone on—as being empty shells. It was as she’d been taught in church, and although she only believed sporadically, it helped to think of death that way, particularly a violent death: their suffering is over. They’re in heaven now. They’re in some afterlife that was somehow better than the raw deal they’d gotten in this world.

  “It can’t be him.”

  “He’s your husband,” McGuane said. “We have his personal effects. Wallet, keys, and so on. Mrs. Hutchinson. This is Dr. Jeffrey ‘Hut’ Hutchinson. I know this is a tremendous shock.”

  She had thought of him so much as Hut that she had nearly forgotten his real first name: Jeff. It’s not him. Why do they keep insisting it’s Hut? It’s not Hut.

  She looked at the wounds, at the arms, the belly, and it wasn’t until she saw the small circular tattoo on the dead man’s left shoulder that it hit her too hard. She felt nausea in her stomach, and a distant, shrill ringing in her ears.

  Someone wrapped his arms around her, holding her up. Had she been falling? She tugged away from the arms and stumbled toward the wall, pressing her forehead into the coolness of the wall itself, as if she could press herself through it.

  And then, she knew that she was going to fall. She was going to fall, and it seemed in slow motion that she would hit the edge of a small metal cabinet on her way down, and then her head would hit the floor.

  3

  She awoke in a darkened room, the only light coming from beneath a door. The smell of fresh coffee somewhere, beyond the darkness. Gradually, as her eyes focused, she saw more: it was simply an office, probably at the sheriff’s station. She felt achy and nauseated, but gradually, perhaps a half-hour after opening her eyes, she pushed herself up from the cot. Her head ached, and she reached to touch the back of her skull. Someone had already taped some gauze just under her hairline at the nape of her neck. She remembered the fall, and winced with pain when she moved her jaw a little. She heard voices beyond the small room. She stepped out into a too-bright light, and went to sit in a large chair in a corner of the sheriff’s office. He had glanced up from his desk, and laid the phone back in its cradle.

  “Mrs. Hutchinson? How are…how are you doing?”

  “I’m a little thirsty, if I could…”

  “Certainly,” the sheriff said, who then went out into the bustling main office to get a cup of water for her. Before the door shut behind him, she saw the man named McGuane again. He was gaunt and had lightly graying dark hair that seemed too long for a detective. He looked to be about fifty, and something in his demeanor and his wrinkled jacket made her think of a scarecrow. He stared at her, as the door closed behind the sheriff.

  “We had you checked out,” the sheriff said. “Your head. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I don’t think it’s a problem,” she said, but the headache was pretty strong.

  Then, she was alone again in the office, blinds drawn around the windows.

  After the sheriff returned with a large plastic cup of water, McGuane followed.

  She watched as he went and took a chair opposite her, pulling it in closer.

  She couldn’t look at him again. Not for a while.

  “I wish I could be gentler about this,” McGuane said.

  4

  Mel came to take her home, and hugged her when she saw her. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the padded yellow envelope in Julie’s hands.

  “Personal effects they said. Wallet, keys, watch,”

  Julie said, feeling dead on the inside.

  “Did you hurt yourself?” Mel gasped when Julie

  turned away from her.

  Julie felt the bandaging on her neck. “Oh. That. It’s

  nothing. Really.”

  5

  In the car, Mel said, “I don’t even know what to say, sweetie. I just don’t. We’ll go home. Somehow, we’ll sort this out.”

  You hated him, Julie wanted to say. You told me on my wedding day that he was a poor bet for a husband. You told me he had too much baggage. Don’t sit here and pretend everything will ever be all right again.

  Julie said, “Hut bought a gun two years ago. He said he didn’t like the way there was too much crime, even in the suburbs. He bought it and I hated it and I tried to throw it away twice. He had it locked up at the top of the linen closet. I made him take the bullets out of it and put those elsewhere. I wish I hadn’t insisted on it. I wish he had his gun with him. I wish he had it. He might still be alive.”

  She felt her sister’s touch on her scalp, combing through her hair, just as her older sister had done when they’d been kids, when Julie had come home from a bad day in kindergarten or first grade, a day of fears and a day of friendships lost. Mel would comb her fingers through Julie’s then-blond hair and whisper, “I’m going to brush all the bad things from your head, Jules. Don’t worry.”

  6

  At home, she lay down on top of her bedspread and stared up at the ceiling until her eyes lost their focus and she had to shut them.

  In her dream, she saw the face again.

  His face. Not dead, but alive.

  Not on a shiny metal table, pasty-white skin, covered

  with blotches of brown-red and bright blue bruises.

  But as he had been the last moment she had seen him. Alive.

  It was morning, and she had just made coffee.

  She turned to him, feeling the sorrow that came with the knowledge of the loss.

  His warm brown eyes brightened when he finished telling a truly bad joke to her, and she chastised him for spilling coffee on the edge of his sleeve. He had given her that look that meant he was tired of the small, petty comments. In the dream, she tried to erase even making a comment about the coffee stain. She looked at him and said, “Try to be home early at least one night this week.”

  “You know how demanding things are right now.” His voice—had she even remembered it correctly in her dream? “It’s not as if I’m making people get sick so I can work late and never be home with my wife and kids. You think I’m that kind of man?”

  Even in the dream, the thought of another woman whom he might or might not be seeing came up for her, a cloud that was both distant and close.

  “Well, you don’t even know your son at this point,” she said—and something inside her said, don’t keep doing this to him, he’s going to want to leave you if you do, don’t become the bitch of the world—and yet, she kept saying, “I got up in the middle of the night and he was cycling again.” Cycling was their word for Matt’s phases that seemed nearly manic when he would stay up all night, playing games of solitaire for too many hours, or doodling ridiculous images in his art notebook, or playing computer chess by himself.

  “Don’t worry about him. All you do is worry sometimes. I’d like to be home once and not have to be surrounded by this�
��this drama,” Hut said.

  And then, the dream evaporated, and when she awoke, in her bed, she thought for just a minute that nothing bad had happened to him, that he would be home later that night, that all of it had just been a dream.

  But the yellow padded envelope lay next to her pillow.

  7

  She opened the yellow envelope and poured the watch and the keys out on her bedspread. The watch was from her, on their first anniversary. It had cost too much money—just under four hundred dollars at Saks, but she felt he needed a really good watch for his work. She wondered if she were still paying on her Visa for it. He had loved the watch, and told her that it was the best gift he’d ever received next to Livy, who had arrived a scant six months after they married. His gargantuan key set—for the house, the clinic, his car, and even keys he’d told her he’d had since he was a kid. She’d joked with him sometimes, asking him if those were keys in his pocket or if he was just happy to see her. His wallet had the normal things she knew would be in there: his credit cards, his social security card, the pictures of the kids, the pictures of her, seventy dollars cash, and a few wadded up receipts.

  All I have left of you, Hut. This is it.

  She switched on the little color TV above the dresser, clicking the remote to surf channels, and was afraid for a moment that the news would come on detailing the murder. But no matter what channel she went to, no one mentioned Hut’s murder. We’re not the news. We’re not what people want to hear about.

  A gentle tapping at her bedroom door. The door slid open slightly. Mel. Her sister’s face was ashen, but brightened a bit as if she had just remembered some piece of good news. “You’re awake.” Her voice was smooth and soft.

  Julie nodded, stretching. No headache. It would be back, but not just yet. She swung her feet over the edge of the bed, but was not ready to stand up.

  “Can I get you some tea? Maybe some decaf chai?”

  “I’m fine. Really,” Julie said. She glanced over at the wide mirror that she and Hut had picked out at Pottery Barn two years before. Her face was all in brambles, to her. Not her face at all, just as the dead man on the table had not had Hut’s face. “I’m fine,” she repeated.

  8

  She managed a shower, and while the steamy water cascaded over her, she didn’t close her eyes. Didn’t want to see inside her own head. Behind the opaque shower curtain, she could see the shadow coming into the bathroom.

  Hut. It would be Hut. He would grin as he pulled back the curtain. Naked and happy as a puppy. In their first days. His grin infectious, his way of touching her so new and so right. Alive. Alive and fresh and younger than he should’ve been in his mid-thirties then. Not in a house with a mortgage too high for an in-debt doctor to the poor and an ER nurse. But in her little apartment in the city, her crappy little place where they’d made a nest, briefly, before her pregnancy, where they’d made love too many times and for too many hours to count. How was she to know that making love was something more than pleasure? More than making a baby? It had been a bonding between them, a clasping of hands that reminded her not of sex, but of absolute love, and how he had been everything to her. Everything.

  The shower beating down on her face washed the tears from her.

  When she emerged from the shower, and dressed, she wasn’t sure why she even cared if she was clean. She wanted to go to Livy, and to Matt, she wanted her children. She wanted them in her arms and she wanted them now.

  9

  The detective showed up at six-thirty that evening.

  Chapter Five

  1

  They sat in the living room. Although all the lamps were turned up, even the overly bright halogen one near the fireplace, Julie felt as if it were shadowy.

  She had unbuttered whole-wheat toast and some tea with a little honey. It was all she had eaten that day, and all she had wanted to eat.

  “I don’t really understand,” she said, after the first few questions.

  “It’s a pattern,” McGuane said. He drank a Diet Coke and refused the cookies offered by Mel, who sat near the upright piano but said nothing. Julie noticed his wedding band, and a ring that looked like a college signet ring. She didn’t want to look back up at his face.

  “Why haven’t you gotten him yet?” she asked.

  2

  McGuane took a sip from his soda, and then glanced over at Mel. Then, out the window. He nodded as if talking to himself. “I wish I had an answer for you. Can you think of anything that would connect your husband to this?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t imagine…” Julie looked down at her teacup. Keep your fingers from trembling. Just keep the teacup still.

  “We’re hoping you might have records here. Not much to go over at the clinic.”

  She glanced up at his face. “He didn’t bring his work home. That was important to him.”

  After the detective had passed her the beige folder with the photographs, she set her cup down on the red table beside her. She opened the folder.

  “You know,” McGuane said, more to Mel than to her. “I live across the Hudson all my life, and I had no idea Jersey is anything but an industrial tract and you know, The Sopranos. Then I come out here and there are all these lakes and trees and it’s like, I don’t know, Pennsylvania.”

  “Except without the Amish,” Mel said. She offered up a weak grin. Julie wished she’d had the presence of mind to thank her out loud for adding some humor to the somber atmosphere.

  Death is everywhere. Death is all around, all the time, she thought. At work, and now here. In my living room. In my house. Uninvited. I don’t want it.

  Julie turned each photograph over.

  More dead people. Just faces. Pale. Not really human anymore. Like white masks. Hollow.

  “I’m sorry to do this to you,” he said, his voice barely more than a mumble. “I’d rather catch this guy before he does it again.”

  “I’ve never seen these people before,” she said. The sound of her own voice, weary and flat, made her feel heavier.

  The pictures: two women and a man. Eyes closed. Empty shells of human beings. Gone.

  Her half-Catholic, half-Episcopalian upbringing reared up in her. Their spirits have flown. They are in God’s hands. They are in heaven. Or some other finer place. Beyond trouble. Beyond this world.

  Beyond the grasp of the one who killed them.

  “There’s another picture,” McGuane said. “Inside.”

  She checked the folder. Under a thin piece of onionskin paper, one last photograph.

  It was a man’s back. Perhaps it was Hut’s. Nothing reminded her of him, but she had barely recognized him in the morgue, so she didn’t expect to identify him without seeing his face. That was why pictures like this were safe. They could be of anyone and no one at the same time.

  All kinds of circles and drawings were carved into the man’s back, from the shoulder blades down to the small of the back, just above the buttocks.

  “Do you have any idea what this might be?”

  Julie shook her head.

  “He carves things into the bodies. He has a ritual. We know a little about what the symbols are. We just don’t know where they lead us.”

  Julie remembered the carving on Matt’s arm. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s nothing like this. Matt’s arm and this man’s back have different things on them. Don’t let your mind go with this, Julie. Don’t.

  “No idea. What is it? They’re like tattoos.”

  “Can I see?” Mel asked.

  Julie glanced at McGuane who gave a slight shrug. Mel got up and went over to retrieve the picture. After glancing at it, Mel said, “You’re making her look at this kind of stuff, now?”

  McGuane kept his composure. “We want to do everything we can to stop this guy.”

  “It’s all right, Mel. Really,” Julie said. “We should help. I want to. I want to see who…what kind of monster…” She covered her face with her hands.

  Just go away, she thought. Eve
ryone go away. Let it be someone else who loses their husband. Not me. Let it be anyone else. Hut, where are you? Why did you leave? Why aren’t you here with me?

  Mel and McGuane started talking. Mel went to sit down on the two steps that led up to the dining area, at the edge of the room. Julie felt she could shut them all out. Just block them, like she were a child with her hands over her ears.

  Then, she brought her hands down from her face. They were still there. They watched her as if she were something that were about to break.

  “We’ve tried to locate the orphanage,” McGuane said.

  She glanced up from the pictures. “The what?”

  “Orphanage. Where your husband grew up.”

  She hesitated before speaking. She tried to grasp his meaning. “He had parents.”

  McGuane glanced at her sharply.

  “Tell me,” she said. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” McGuane said. “Nothing at all.”

  “I know he was adopted,” Julie said. “But he was little. Three or four. I think four.”

  “Mrs. Hutchinson, your husband wasn’t adopted until he was sixteen. Before that he was a ward of the state of New York.”

  “What?”

  “He was part of a special program, Mrs. Hutchinson. It was the 1970s, and there was some special aptitude your husband had to qualify for this program. As a boy.”

  “Are you sure you mean my husband? Jeff Hutchinson?”

  McGuane nodded. “I’m sorry that you weren’t aware. I assumed that your husband would have informed you about his past. About his childhood.”