by Jodi Picoult
“What is it Mark Twain said? Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
“Guess if I ask you where you’ve been, you’re not gonna tell me, anyway,” Ralph replies.
“Nope. And I’d be awfully grateful if you didn’t mention me being here, either. I get itchy when people ask too many questions.” Virgil takes a slightly mashed Twinkie from his pocket and sets this on the counter between us and Ralph.
“How old is that?” I murmur.
“These things have enough preservatives in them to keep them on the shelves until 2050,” Virgil whispers. “And besides, Ralph can’t read the tiny print of the expiration date.”
Sure enough, Ralph’s entire face lights up. His mouth creases in a smile, and it has ripple effects that remind me of a YouTube video I once saw of a building implosion. “You remember my weakness, Virgil,” he says, and he glances at me. “Who’s your sidekick?”
“My tennis partner.” Virgil leans through the opening in the door. “Look, Ralphie. I need to check out one of my old cases.”
“You’re not on payroll anymore—”
“I was barely on payroll when I was on payroll. Come on, bud. It’s not like I’m asking to mess with any active investigation. I’m just freeing up a little space for you.”
Ralph shrugs. “I guess it can’t hurt, as long as the case is closed …”
Virgil unlatches the door and pushes past him. “No need to get up. I know the way.”
I follow him down a long, narrow hallway. Metal shelving lines both walls from floor to ceiling, and there are cardboard boxes neatly jammed into every available space. Virgil’s lips move as he reads the labels of the banker’s boxes, arranged by case number and date. “Next aisle,” he mutters. “This one only goes back to 2006.”
After a few more minutes he stops, and starts to monkey-climb the shelving. He pulls one of the boxes free and tosses it into my arms. It’s lighter than I was expecting. I set it on the floor so that he can pass down three more boxes.
“That’s it?” I say. “I thought you told me there was a ton of evidence taken from the sanctuary.”
“There was. But the case was solved. We only kept the items that were connected to people—things like soil and trampled plants and debris that turned out to not be consequential were destroyed.”
“If someone’s already gone through it all, why are we going back to it?”
“Because you can look at a mess twelve times and see nothing. And then you look the thirteenth time, and whatever you were searching for is staring out at you, clear as day.” He opens the lid of the top box. Inside are paper storage bags, sealed with tape. On the tape, and on the bags, it says NO.
“No?” I read. “What’s in that bag?”
Virgil shakes his head. “That stands for Nigel O’Neill. He was a cop who was searching for evidence that night. Protocol means that the officer has to put his initials and the date collected on the bag and the tape, to make the chain of evidence hold up in court.” He points to the other markings on the bag: a property number, with a list of items: SHOELACE, RECEIPT. Another: VICTIM’S CLOTHING—SHIRT, SHORTS.
“Open that one,” I direct.
“Why?”
“You know how sometimes a specific item can jog a memory? I want to see if that’s true.”
“The victim here wasn’t your mother,” Virgil reminds me.
As far as I’m concerned, that remains to be seen. But he opens the paper bag, snaps on a pair of gloves from a box on the shelf, and pulls out a pair of khaki shorts and a shredded, stiff polo shirt with the New England Elephant Sanctuary logo embroidered on the left breast.
“Well?” he prompts.
“Is that blood?” I ask.
“No, it’s dried Kool-Aid. If you want to be a detective, be a detective,” he says.
Still, it kind of freaks me out. “It looks like the same uniform everyone wore.”
Virgil keeps rummaging. “Here we go,” he says, pulling out a bag that is so flat there can’t possibly be anything in it. The evidence tag says #859, LOOSE HAIR INSIDE BODY BAG. He takes the bag and slips it into his pocket. Then he picks up two of the boxes and carries them toward the entrance, glancing over his shoulder. “Make yourself useful.”
I follow him, the other boxes stacked in my arms. I’m pretty sure he took the lighter ones on purpose. These feel like they’re full of rocks. At the entrance, Ralph glances up from the nap he’s been taking. “Good to catch up, Virgil.”
Virgil points his finger. “You never saw me.”
“Saw what?” Ralph says.
We duck out the same back entrance of the police station and carry the boxes to Virgil’s truck. He manages to stuff them into the backseat, which is already jammed with food wrappers and old CD cases and paper towels and sweatshirts and empty bottles. I climb into the passenger seat. “Now what?”
“Now we have to go sweet-talk a lab into doing a mitochondrial DNA test.”
I don’t know what that is, but it sounds like something that would be part of a thorough investigation. I’m impressed. I glance at Virgil, who, I should say, has cleaned up pretty nicely now that he’s not completely drunk. He’s showered and shaved, so he smells like a pine forest instead of stale gin. “Why did you leave?”
He glances at me. “Because we got what we came for.”
“I meant the police department. Didn’t you want to be a detective?”
“Apparently not as much as you do,” Virgil murmurs.
“I think I deserve to know what I’m getting for my money.”
He snorts. “A bargain.”
He backs up too fast, and one of the boxes tumbles over. The storage bags inside spill out, so I unbuckle my seat belt and twist around, trying to right the mess. “It’s hard to tell what’s evidence and what’s your trash,” I say. The tape has peeled off one of the brown paper bags, and the evidence inside has fallen into a nest of McDonald’s fish fillet wrappers. “This is gross. Who eats fifteen fish fillets?”
“It wasn’t all at once,” Virgil says.
But I’m barely listening, because my hand has closed around the evidence that was dislodged. I pivot forward, still holding the tiny pink Converse sneaker.
Then I look down at my feet.
I’ve had pink Converse high-tops for as long as I can remember. Longer. They’re my one indulgence, the only items of clothing I ever ask my grandmother for.
I’m wearing them in every photograph of me as an infant: propped up against a clan of teddy bears, sitting on a blanket with a pair of huge sunglasses balanced on my nose; brushing my teeth at the sink, naked except for those shoes. My mother had a pair, too—old, beaten ones that she had kept from her college days. We did not wear identical dresses or have the same haircut; we didn’t practice putting on makeup. But in this one small thing, we matched.
I still wear my sneakers, practically every day. They’re kind of like a good-luck charm, or maybe a superstition. If I haven’t taken mine off, then maybe … well. You get it.
The roof of my mouth feels like a desert. “This was mine.”
Virgil looks at me. “You’re sure?”
I nod.
“Did you ever run around barefoot when you were in the sanctuary with your mother?”
I shake my head. That was a rule; no one went inside without footwear. “It wasn’t like a golf course,” I said. “There were knobs of grass and thicket and bush. You could trip in the holes that the elephants dug.” I turn the tiny shoe over in my hand. “I was there, that night. And I still don’t know what happened.”
Had I gotten out of bed and wandered into the enclosures? Had my mom been looking for me?
Am I the reason she’s gone?
My mother’s research comes thundering into my head. Negative moments get remembered. Traumatic ones get forgotten.
Virgil’s face is unreadable. “Your father told us you were asleep,” he says.
“Well, I didn’t go to sleep wearing shoes
. Someone must have put them on me and tied the laces.”
“Someone,” Virgil repeats.
Last night, I dreamed about my father. He was creeping through the tall grass near the pond in the sanctuary enclosure, calling my name. Jenna! Come out, come out, wherever you are!
We were safe out here, because the two African elephants were inside the barn having their feet examined. I knew that home base in this game was the wide wall of the barn. I knew that my father always won, because he could run faster than me. But this time, I was not going to let him.
Bean, he said, his name for me. I can see you.
I knew he was lying, because he started walking away from my hiding spot.
I had dug myself into the banks of the pond the way the elephants did when my mother and I watched them playing, spraying each other with the hoses of their trunks or rolling like wrestlers in the mud to cool their hot skin.
I waited for my father to pass the big tree where Nevvie and Gideon would set dinner for the animals—cubes of hay and Blue Hubbard squash and entire watermelons. Enough to feed a small family, or a single elephant. As soon as he was in its shadow, I scrambled up from the bank where I’d been wallowing and ran forward.
It wasn’t easy. My clothes were caked with dirt; my hair was knotted in a rope down my back. My pink sneakers had been sucked into the muck of the pond. But I knew I was going to win, and a giggle slipped from my lips, like the squeal of helium from the neck of a balloon.
It was all that my father needed. Hearing me, he spun and raced toward me, hoping to cut me off before I could flatten my muddy handprints against the corrugated metal wall of that barn.
Maybe he would have reached me, too, if Maura hadn’t thundered from the tree cover, trumpeting so loudly that I froze. She swung her trunk and knocked my father across his face. He fell to the ground, clutching his right eye, which swelled within seconds. She danced nervously between us, so that my father had to roll out of the way or risk being crushed.
“Maura,” he panted. “It’s all right. Easy, girl—”
The elephant bellowed again, an air horn that left my ears ringing.
“Jenna,” my father said quietly, “don’t move.” And under his breath: “Who the hell let that elephant out of the barn?”
I started crying. I didn’t know if I was scared for me or for my father. But in all the times my mother and I had observed Maura, I’d never seen her act violent.
Suddenly the door of the barn slid open on its thick cable track, and my mother was standing in the massive doorframe. She took one look at my father, Maura, and me. “What did you do to her?” she asked him.
“Are you kidding? We were playing hide-and-seek.”
“You and the elephant?” As she spoke, my mother slowly moved between Maura and my father, so that he could safely get up.
“No, for Christ’s sake. Me and Jenna. Until Maura came out of nowhere and smacked me.” He rubbed his face.
“She must have thought you were trying to hurt Jenna.” My mother frowned. “Why on earth were you playing hide-and-seek in Maura’s enclosure?”
“Because she was supposed to be in the barn having foot care done.”
“No, just Hester.”
“Not according to the information that Gideon posted on the whiteboard—”
“Maura didn’t feel like coming in.”
“And I was supposed to know that how?”
My mother kept cooing to Maura, until the animal lumbered a distance away, still watching my father warily.
“That elephant hates everyone but you,” he muttered.
“Not true. Apparently, she likes Jenna.” Maura rumbled a response, approaching the tree line to graze, and my mother scooped me into her arms. She smelled of cantaloupe, the treat she must have been feeding Hester in the barn while the pads of the elephant’s feet were being soaked and scraped and treated for cracks. “For someone who screams at me for taking Jenna into the enclosures, you picked an interesting place to play games.”
“There weren’t supposed to be any elephants in this—Oh, for God’s sake. Never mind. I can’t win.” My father touched his hand to his head and winced.
“Let me take a look at that,” my mother said.
“I have a meeting with an investor in a half hour. I’m supposed to be explaining to him how safe it is to have a sanctuary in a populated area. And now I’ll be giving that speech with a black eye that was given to me by an elephant.”
My mother shifted me to one hip and touched his face, prodding gently. These moments, when we seemed like a pie before any of the pieces are eaten, were the best ones for me. They almost could erase the other moments.
“It could be worse,” my mother said, leaning against him.
I could see him, feel him, soften. It was the sort of observation my mother always tried to point out to me in the field: just the shift of body, the slide of the shoulders, that let you know there was no longer an invisible wall of fear. “Oh, really,” my father murmured. “How so?”
My mother smiled up at him. “I could have been the one to deck you,” she said. For the past ten minutes, I’ve been sitting on an examination table observing the mating behavior of the Fundamentally Alcoholic, Washed-Up Male and the Oversexed, Overblown Cougar.
Here are my scientific field notes:
The Male is uneasy, caged. He sits and taps his foot incessantly, then gets up and paces. He has put a little effort into grooming today, in anticipation of seeing the Cougar, who enters the room.
She wears a white laboratory coat and too much makeup. She smells like the perfume inserts in magazines that are so overwhelming you are tempted to lob the whole issue across the room, even if it means you’ll never find out the Ten Things Guys Want in Bed or What Makes Jennifer Lawrence Mad! She is a blond with dark roots, and someone needs to tell her that pencil skirts are not doing her ass any favors.
The Male makes the first move. He uses dimples as a weapon. He says, Wow, Lulu, long time no see.
The Cougar rebuffs his advances. Whose fault is that, Victor?
I know, I know. You can beat me up all you want.
A subtle but measurable change in the atmospheric pressure. Is that a promise?
Teeth. Lots of them.
Careful now. Don’t start something you can’t finish, the Male says.
I don’t recall that ever being a problem for us. Do you?
From where I am sitting making my observations, I roll my eyes. Either this is the best argument for contraception since the Octomom … or this crap really works between men and women, and I will probably not have a date until I’m menopausal.
The Cougar’s senses are better than the Male’s; she radars my snark all the way across the room. She touches the Male on his shoulder and flicks her eyes toward me. Didn’t know you had kids.
Kids? Virgil looks at me as if I’m the bug he’s squashed on the sole of his shoe. Oh, she’s not mine. She’s actually the reason I’m here.
Duh, even I know that’s the wrong thing to say. The Cougar’s painted mouth pinches tight. Don’t let me keep you from getting down to business.
Virgil grins, superslow, and I can practically see the Cougar start to drool. Why, Tallulah, he says, I’d like to do just that with you. But you know I have to take care of my client first.
The Cougar’s cell phone rings, and she looks at the number flashing on the screen. “Jesus on a cracker,” she says and sighs. “Give me five minutes.”
She slams out of the examination room, and Virgil hops on the metal table beside me, running one hand down his face. “You have no idea how much you owe me.”
This surprises me. “You mean you don’t really like her?”
“Tallulah? God, no. She used to be my dental hygienist, and then she quit and became a DNA squint. Every time I see her I think about her scraping plaque off my teeth. I’d rather date a sea cucumber.”
“They throw up their own stomachs when they eat,” I say.
&nbs
p; He considers this. “I’ve taken Tallulah out to dinner. Like I said, I’d go for the sea cucumber.”
“Then why are you acting like you want her to plug and play?”
His eyes widen. “You did not just say that.”
“Ride the baloney pony.” I grin. “Storm the trenches …”
“What the hell is wrong with kids these days?” Virgil mutters.
“Blame it on my upbringing. I had a profound lack of parental guidance.”
“And you think I’m disgusting because I have a drink every now and then.”
“(A) I think you drink all the time, and (b) if you want to get specific, what makes you disgusting is that you’re totally playing Tallulah, who thinks you’re planning to ask for her number.”
“I’m taking one for the team, for Christ’s sake,” Virgil says. “You want to find out if your mother was the person who left that hair behind on Nevvie Ruehl’s body? Then we have two choices. We can either try to sweet-talk someone at the police department to order up a test through the state lab, which they won’t do because the case is closed and because the backlog is over a year’s wait … or we can try to get the test done at a private lab.” He looks up at me. “For free.”
“Wow. You are taking one for the team,” I say, all fake wide-eyed innocence. “You can bill me for condoms. I feel bad enough, you know, without having to worry about her trying to trap you in a pregnancy.”
He scowls. “I’m not going to sleep with Tallulah. I’m not even going to ask her out. I’m just going to let her think I am. And because of that, she’s going to do your buccal swab and fast-track it, as a favor.” I stare at him, impressed by his plan. Maybe he is going to turn out to be a decent private investigator, if he’s this wily. “This is what you should say when she comes back,” I instruct: “ ‘I may not be Fred Flintstone, but I can make your Bed Rock.’ ”
Virgil smirks. “Thanks. If I need any help, I’ll ask.”
As the door opens again, Virgil jumps off the table, and I bury my face in my hands and start to sob. Well, I pretend to, anyway.
